“The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call” Takes Aim at Roots of Century’s Greatest U.S. Healthcare Crisis

New book by Dave Chase kick-starts conversation on how employers and local leaders can drive systems change

SEATTLE, WA – SEPTEMBER 4, 2018 – The widespread overprescription and abuse of opioids has become the most visible symbol of the failures of the U.S. healthcare system. Now a new book by Dave Chase, founder of Health Rosetta, provides the first comprehensive prescription for fixing that entire broken system. The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call: Health Care Stole the American Dream. Here’s How We Take It Back is a rallying cry for nationwide systems change, spearheaded at the local level.

“The opioid epidemic is affecting millions of families, thousands of employers, and nearly every community,” said Chase. “It’s a problem that demands our attention and focus, and which we can only truly fix by attacking the upstream cause of the entire mess: the continued dysfunction of the U.S. healthcare system.”

From the book’s opening pages, Chase makes it clear that the national opioid epidemic did not occur in a vacuum. Beginning with the devaluing of primary care and exacerbated by the misaligned interests among many in the health industry, the book traces the deterioration of patient-focused care and its lapse into our current system. Primary care now serves as little more than a wheelhouse of referrals for unnecessary procedures, painful surgeries and “quick-fix” prescriptions like opioids that get patients in and out of the hospital quickly – at the expense of putting them on the fast track to addiction.

The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call defines what real change requires throughout all facets of U.S. healthcare. Each chapter explains how individual healthcare stakeholders — from CEOs to community leaders to congressional leaders to consumers — can work together to drive change within U.S. health care and reverse the effects of the opioid crisis. Real-world case studies and examples provide accounts of individuals and organizations that have taken on the healthcare status quo and succeeded. These include a county that went from having the highest opioid overdose death rate in its state to the lowest per capita, with zero overdose deaths two years running; and the story of  an employer who used evidence-based pain treatment to reduce employee opioid prescriptions to one-sixth of the national average.

The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call builds on insights gleaned and lessons drawn from Chase’s previous book, The CEO’s Guide to Restoring the American Dream: How to Deliver World Class Health Care to Your Employees at Half the Cost. Chase’s new book aims at a broader audience, addressing civic leaders like mayors and city/county councils, public and private unions, police and fire chiefs, faith and social service providers,and civic-minded business leaders to highlight the scope of the crisis as well as the sources for the solution.

About the Author:

Dave Chase is CEO of Health Rosetta, PBC, which accelerates adoption of practical, business-led fixes to our healthcare system. Chase speaks frequently on how healthcare is stealing the American Dream and the redemption that can come via a bottom-up movement. Chase was formerly the CEO/Co-founder of Avado, acquired by & integrated into WebMD & Medscape. He also played founding and leadership roles in launching two new billion-dollar businesses within Microsoft, including a $2 billion healthcare platform business.

His previous book, The CEO’s Guide to Restoring the American Dream: How to Deliver World Class Health Care to Your Employees at Half the Cost, became an Amazon best seller. His first book, Engage! Transforming Healthcare Through Digital Patient Engagement, won the health care book of the year award in 2014.

About “The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call: Health Care Stole the American Dream. Here’s How We Take It Back.”

Available in:                    Paperback / Kindle

Publisher:                        Health Rosetta Media

Publication Date:       September 4, 2018

Pages:                                 416

ISBN-10:                                0999234331