Alan Spiro's top 10 books for healthcare industry professionals
Dr. Alan Spiro, Pager Advisory Board Member and healthcare industry thought leader, shared with our team the top 10 books he recommends to anyone working in the healthcare industry. Dr. Spiro’s wide-ranging list is reflective of his extensive background in healthcare – as Co-Founder, Chief Medical Officer, and Executive VP of Accolade, Spiro served as program architect for the company, which raised $220M in its initial public offering last year. More recently, he served as Chief Medical Officer and Chief Growth Officer at Blue Health Intelligence, where he was able to develop data-driven solutions to help BCBS Plans and their provider partners deliver value-based, contextual care solutions. Among other roles, he has also served as Chief Medical Officer at Anthem National Accounts and Medica.
As Dr. Spiro mentioned in our recent interview, in order to provide a service ultimately aimed at improving health, the healthcare system, and the patient experience, we must understand that the patient is a whole person, and that their health is based in the context of the rest of their life.
Below, Dr. Spiro shares his recommendations for books to build a deeper understanding of patients not just as patients, but as consumers, and as humans:
1. “When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests” by Leana Wen, M.D. and Joshua Kosowsky, M.D.
“Leana Wen is an Emergency Room (ER) physician by background, the former Commissioner of Health for the city of Baltimore, and the former President of Planned Parenthood. She’s very accomplished, and uniquely speaks in an understandable way about the need to listen behind the scenes of what a person is saying in regards to their health and their life. ER doctors have a short amount of time to understand what may be going on with a person in a larger context; she uses that knowledge and skill in this book.”
2. “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Hsieh
“Tony Hsieh was the former CEO of Zappos. Before Zappos was bought by Amazon, it was structured in a way that everyone on the phone was not instructed simply to sell – they were encouraged to ‘deliver happiness.’ They were asked to go out of their way to do whatever was needed so that the customer was happy.
Though this book isn’t rooted in healthcare, the core idea remains. The key is to find out what people really want and need, and figure out how to deliver on that.”
3. “On Becoming a Healer: The Journey from Patient Care to Caring about Your Patients” by Saul Weiner
“Saul is one of the great researchers on life context issues in healthcare, including how to measure and how to quantify life context. I use his research often. He argues that the relationship between a doctor and patient should be anchored in who the person is, not the disease they may have, which is an important distinction.”
4. “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” by Atul Gawande
“This book dials in on the importance of seeing a person as a person. When you care for people who are dying, it’s important to remember that just because they’re dying doesn’t mean they don’t have things they want to accomplish in life. I used to do a lot of work in the study of death and dying, and I found that the secret to caring for people that are dying is remembering that they’re alive.
As a physician, Gawande was called to treat something medically, but found that it may not fit in with what the patient wants for the remainder of their lives. It’s about understanding a person’s goals, not just a medical indication. Gawande is an excellent writer, and this book focuses on those kinds of lessons.”
5. “The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry” by Paul Starr
“This is a massive sociology book which had a profound effect on me, because it’s a sociological history of medicine. It speaks to how much of medicine is not about science, but is about human interaction. If you like this kind of intellectual tour de force, this is an old book, but a great one.”
6. “Listening for What Matters: Avoiding Contextual Errors in Healthcare” by Saul Wiener and Alan Schwartz
I serve on the board of Saul and Alan’s organization. They have pioneered this research, which uses recordings of patient visits and actor patients to measure the impact that life context issues have on medicine. They have published this over the past 20 years and it’s fascinating, and groundbreaking. They summarize these ideas for a non-medical audience. This book gets at the fact that life context – whether it’s emotions, family concerns, access, or finances – have profound effects on healthcare.”
7. “Pre-Suasion: Channeling Attention for Change” by Robert Cialdini
“Bob Cialdini is considered the father of the psychology of influence. He is a professor emeritus at Arizona State University and the Founder of their Institute of Influence. He wrote his first book, Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion, in the 1980s, and it has since sold millions of copies in a number of languages and is considered the best on persuasion.
Pre-Suasion is his newest book, which I had the honor of reviewing pre-publication. It discusses how, if you are trying to influence someone for a positive result, you have to set yourself up for this persuasion. It applies to so much of what we do in healthcare. Much of what he writes is used for sales purposes – using his ideas in healthcare, it’s fascinating how much good you can do with it.”
8. “Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again” by Eric Topol
“Eric is a pioneer in the movement toward wearables in medicine, remote monitoring, and using technology in new and fundamental ways. As someone who is interested in data, I’ve seen a movement around big data. What he describes is that deep data – the amount of information you can get on each individual, especially using technologies and remote monitoring – is as important, if not more important, than big data.
A big data set may have a million people in it, but each person in that data set is just a dot on a line. On the other hand, with a million pieces of information on one person, including genetics, emotions, social factors, and even the macrobiome, for example, you could have a million data points just for you. In this book, for a non-technical audience, he talks about all of those deep medicine learnings and how they can apply to create better healthcare for all of us.”
9. “Medicine and Culture” by Lynn Payer
“This is an emotional favorite for me. Lynn Payer was an American based in Paris, working as the health reporter for the International Herald Tribune. She wrote this study in the 1980s comparing healthcare in the U.S., France, Germany, and Britain. She found that the results from the care were the same, but the treatments and the way care was practiced were very different. It really shaped my knowledge of healthcare.
This book says a lot about how we practice medicine, as well as the societal and cultural aspects of medical care. It turns out that medicine is much less scientific and much more cultural than people think – and that’s still true today.”
10. Research from Jennifer Learner, Ph.D.
“Jennifer Learner is the Thornton F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy, Management, and Decision Science at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research focuses on emotions and decision making. Though not technically a book, her research is interesting, and very relevant, because your stress levels and emotions when making medical decisions are very high. When you’re talking to people about their health and healthcare, you have to figure out how to help them make better decisions in emotional situations. Some of her recent research can be found on her website.”
