Dr. Joey Rotella Wrote The Illusion of Care So Patients Stop Leaving the Doctor's Office With Nothing
“What I liked about Scribe is that they take people who are ready enough, they polish it, and you have time to go over and over and over it again to make sure it looks good and it reads appropriate.”
Joey Rotella, author of The Illusion of Care
Dr. Joey Rotella has been a family physician for more than 20 years. Over and over, he watched patients nod along in the exam room, then leave unsure of what to do next. The Illusion of Care is his fix, and he wrote it short on purpose so a doctor can use it the next day.
It started with a call from his daughter
Clip · Joey Rotella on the care plan he emailed his daughter · 37s
Joey’s daughter used to call him after her own doctor visits to ask what the doctor meant. One time, instead of explaining over the phone, he emailed her one of the simple care plans he had started building.
“And she read the email. And she said, That’s exactly what the doctor said, but I couldn’t remember it. And a couple days later, the condition was completely resolved.”
— Joey Rotella
That moment shaped the core idea of the book. Patients do not need a thicker stack of handouts. They need to know what to do when they get home.
The doctor is supposed to be the teacher
Clip · Joey Rotella on why doctor means teacher · 27s
“So that’s where early on in my book, the Latin word for doctor is docere, which means to teach, therefore, the patient is the student.”
— Joey Rotella
Joey remembers being excited to teach as a young doctor, handing out sheets and drawing on whiteboards. Over the years, busy schedules and electronic records pushed that out. The cost lands on patients and on doctors.
Clip · Joey Rotella on what rushed visits do to doctors · 32s
“The fact is that a physician goes home every night knowing that most of their patients didn’t grasp what they said. You can’t teach somebody with a high risk condition in a high risk medication, everything they need to know in 5 to 10, 5 to 10 to 15 minutes.”
— Joey Rotella
A care plan, not a physics book
Joey’s answer is the care plan method at the center of the book. Each plan is written in the first person, laid out as checkboxes, and kept between a third and fifth grade medical reading level. He has built about 3,000 of them so far, aiming for one for every drug, condition, and procedure.
“And it takes literally five to 10, 20 seconds to print them off and hand them to the patient. And at least they’re going home with something.”
— Joey Rotella
Clip · Joey Rotella on the care plan that went home to dinner · 33s
One of the best compliments he has received came from a patient who stopped him mid-visit to say his wife loved the care plan and they talked about it at dinner.
“So the care went home with them. They talked about it at dinner, which basically means they’re willing to make some, change some habits, to change some things so they can get better.”
— Joey Rotella
A short book doctors can use tomorrow
Clip · Joey Rotella on why he kept the book short · 41s
Joey had read many healthcare books that call for big changes in policy. He wanted to write something a busy doctor could finish and act on right away.
“But I wanted to do something where a physician could read this book and that’s why I intentionally made the book short, easy reading, non-technical just so they can do something tomorrow.”
— Joey Rotella
The book speaks to patients too. His advice to them: act like a student, bring a pen and paper, and learn as much as you can before you leave the office.
From a manuscript to a book
Joey had wanted to write a book for years. He found Scribe Media after reading David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me and seeing that Scribe had helped make it. By then he had a manuscript mostly written, and he knew that was not the same thing as a book.
Clip · Joey Rotella on asking for help · 16s
“Well, I know that I’m not a good writer. I needed help. And so when you ask for help and you get help and you have to work at it. So even though you’re not good at something, doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”
— Joey Rotella
He spent late nights after clinic and skipped a lot of gym sessions to read, reread, rewrite, and work through changes with his Scribe editor, chapter by chapter.
“And all of a sudden, when I was looking at the manuscript that when I first started with it, chapter by chapter, I’m like, oh, this is turning into a book.”
— Joey Rotella
Clip · Joey Rotella on what Scribe polished · 35s
“And then there’s small little nuances that most people don’t think about that Scribe really helped me out with. I mean, you don’t think about the size of your book. You don’t think about the font. You don’t think about the page layouts. You don’t think about the front cover, the back cover.”
— Joey Rotella
The cover, a maze with a pencil, was his idea. The illustration was not. “And by the way, I’m getting a lot of compliments on my cover.”
His advice: you are probably ready enough
Clip · Joey Rotella on being ready enough · 19s
Joey admits he is not good at podcasts either. He showed up anyway. His advice to anyone sitting on an idea they think could fix something real is the same.
“So my advice is that you’re probably ready enough. If you’ve got your thoughts on paper, you have a good conclusion that can come up with a summary of what you want that ends with the conclusion and you think that you’re ready, you’re ready enough. You’ve got to start.”
— Joey Rotella
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