Introduction To Health Services (ISBN 0766836118)

Excellent introductory overview to the US health system.:
Williams and Torrens have developed one of the best introductory texts on the US health system. The book has clear learning objectives, useful references, and helpful diagrams. The American health system is farily and accurately described, warts and all.

Oddly parochial title ...:
If this book is only about the US health service, why doesn't the title say so? There are quite a few other countries out there in the world, and almost all of them have health services!

not the best intro to health services:
This book is not very well suited to those who want an introduction to health policy and services. If you have some background in the field, it will probably be too basic to help you very much. I had no such background when I began using this book in a graduate course in health policy, and while most of the text is understandable, it is generally not very interesting and/or helpful. I suppose it's a good thing that the book and chapters are brief, however it leaves out a lot of details that I felt would be beneficial towards understanding a very complex system. When statistics are used to exemplify a point, they are generally pretty dated. Even if a new edition were available though, I'd read through a chapter or two in the library before investing in this book.

Good introduction to HS for non medical types:
Using this text for a distance learning course. Seems to provide a good introduction to the subjects of Health Services. Written on a level I can understand, not being a medical person, but a hospital support person.

A very expensive book considering the length and content:
This book is adequate for the purpose it was written but my biggest criticism is the price which is it sold for. I feel that I have read many similar books with three or four times the content and is the price at which Intro to Health Services was sold.