"Yorker Goes on 'Today:' Author writes about health"
By Charlie Young
York Dispatch/ Sunday News
April 24, 2000

York-native Dr. Marie Savard will appear on NBC's "Today" show tomorrow to promote her newly published books on how to manage your own health care. Her books How to Save Your Own Life: The Savard System for Managing and Controlling Healthcare, and The Savard Health Record: A Six Step System for Managing Your Healthcare, by Time Life Trade Publishing will be available in bookstores locally and across the country to coincide with Savard's appearance.

"I'm kind of nervous," said Savard, a 1967 graduate of York Catholic High School who practices internal medicine in the Philadelphia area. "I'm really hoping to be interviewed by Katie (Couric) because she has been such an advocate of taking charge of your health."

Couric has publicly promoted colon cancer screening tests since her husband died of the disease.

Savard's books are based on her philosophy that patients in today's managed-care culture of medicine can no longer trust their doctors to take complete care of them.

One doctor cannot possibly know everything about every patient they see and keep track of the significance of every test result or know when preventive tests and procedures are needed for each patient's unique circumstances, Savard wrote in a statement.

Instead of relying on the myth of an all-knowing family doctor, patients today need to take a responsibility for their care. That means understanding their own health conditions and taking preventative measures.

What to do: Savard said she believes there are three components to getting the best health care possible in an era of medical cost cutting and increasingly impersonal care. Patients must trust themselves and those close to them as the real experts in their care; they must compile records of their medical records and learn to understand them; and they must establish a partnership with their doctors, rather than passively relying on them to do it all.

"You have to be at the center of your health care and be an advocate for yourself," Savard said.

Savard has traveled extensively promoting her ideas, making appearances at health conferences, on radio shows and at schools.

"I've already been so rewarded just in talking to people in working on this," she said. "Almost daily I'm rewarded by stories of people who have been helped by doing what they need to do.

"I think it's really going to make a difference."

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