Managerial and Supervisory Principles for Physical Therapists, ed 2.

Managerial and Supervisory Principles for Physical Therapists, ed 2 Nosse 13, Friberg DG, Kovacek PR. Baltimore, MD 21201-2436, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2004, hardcover, 516 pp, illus, ISBN: 0-7818-4261-1, $54.95.

This textbook attempts to provide the student with broad coverage across several topics, including health policy, governmental oversight, health law, ethics, leadership, management, human resources, economics, quality, financial management, accounting techniques, financial planning, coding, and documentation. The broad array of topics creates the impression that each area can easily be defined, discussed, and interpreted in a single chapter, a certain impossibility.

This text is specifically directed toward physical therapists. The authors posit that physical therapist professional education programs seldom delve into the vast field related to health services management, including health policy and worldwide perspectives.

The text is written in a lesson format, beginning with a section tided "Learning Objectives" and keywords with acronyms. Most chapters include several visuals along with case studies, student notes, and chapter summaries. The didactic approach and writing style is well suited for physical therapist students. Also, the text has merit as the basis for continuing education courses designed for physical therapists interested in learning more about the health care environment beyond treatment and reimbursement.

The chapters that specifically deal with business basics and forms of business organizations are particularly well written and provide a framework of knowledge for any physical therapist involved in supervising others or owning their own business. The group case study in chapter 7 ("Business Basics: Forms of Business Organizations"), for example, discusses the all-too-familiar issue of local control and retaining the community hospital. In this case, the rural community is said to have a population of 65,780 residents and is 60 miles away from a tertiary-care medical center.

Although this community is not really rural (the government would consider the population presented in the case to be urban), the case study does present a real-life scenario for communities of less than 10,000 located at distances greater than 30 miles from another population center with an equal or greater number of residents.

The authors write well and from personal experience and knowledge. Chapter 12, "Quality Assessment and Improvement," however, fails to provide the most up-to-date knowledge in this particular field. There is, for example, no mention of the seminal group that deals with health care quality, the National Association of Healthcare Quality (NAHQ), or of the current movement of Six Sigma designations.

Many of the sources cited in the 7 chapters on human resources management (part III) are more than 5 years old. Although the historical perspective provided by knowledge experts in the 1970s is helpful, the addition of new knowledge and learning developed since then would be more valuable. And the authors' tendency to cite their own previous publications on the same topics further weakens the credibility of the citations. I believe the book's authors could make a stronger case by citing peer-reviewed sources from other authors to support their viewpoints.

Overall, this textbook presents basic management principles and health policy perspectives for a physical therapist. I recommend it as a textbook for physical therapist education and as a resource for physical therapists searching for policy application specific to the field of physical therapy.

Cheryl LaFollette Anderson, PT, PhD, MBA, GCS 

PrimeWest Health System

Alexandria, Minn

Dr Anderson is Director of Health Policy and Quality, as well as a clinician, educator, and researcher living and working in rural Minnesota. She is currently involved with a government demonstration project dealing with managed Medicaid and Medicare in a rural environment.