T
he nation's healthcare system is
on life support with questionable
surprise billing tactics, physi-
cians performing unnecessary
procedures, complex pricing
structures, and bureaucracy and administra-
tive waste threatening to pull the plug.
"It sometimes takes the whole system
falling apart and shattering into pieces to
make real change happen," says Marty
Makary, MD, MPH, a healthcare policy expert
and surgeon at Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, Md. "We're at that point now."
Dr. Makary spent 2 years visiting 22
American cities to talk with physicians, nurs-
es, facility administrators, business leaders
and insurers to identify the true drivers of ris-
ing healthcare costs and explore ways to
reign in the alarmingly high expense of treat-
ing patients. He detailed what he discovered
in his new book The Price We Pay: What
Broke American Health Care — and How to
Fix It. At OR Excellence, during what's sure to be
one of the conference's most compelling presenta-
tions, he'll share his personal insights about the
nation's cost crisis.
1 2 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
Marty Makary, MD, MPH
Johns Hopkins University | Baltimore, Md.
Solving Healthcare's Cost Crisis
• Author of the best-
selling book
Unaccountable: What
Hospitals Won't Tell
You and How
Transparency Can
Revolutionize Health
Care.
• Regular contributor
to the Wall Street
Journal and USA
Today, and frequent
medical commenta-
tor on major televi-
sion networks and
cable news shows.
• Helped develop the
World Health
Organization's surgi-
cal safety checklist.
Speaker Profile
