Smartphone- and tablet-based medical devices and apps have significant potential to affect the patient-clinician relationship and improve the efficiency of the health care system.

Today, much of the information that doctors gain during medical school and residency can be accessed by patients at the click of a mouse.

AMA Code of Medical Ethics’ opinions on patient requests for and use of non-prescribed treatments.

Because advertisements’ primary purpose is to sell products rather than to inform patients in an unbiased manner, reasonable oversight of direct-to-consumer advertisements of drugs is essential for the public’s health.

The U. S. health care system encourages patients to take more responsibility for their own treatment decisions and expects their doctors to cooperate in that effort. But the guidelines for exercising that responsibility remain very murky indeed.

While patient consumerism may cause inefficiencies that need to be managed appropriately, insofar as it leads to active patient participation it has the potential to improve medical decision making.

An effective policy regarding retail clinics in a primary care practice should address patients' need for timely and convenient acute care and build capacity for enhanced access to acute care within the primary care clinic itself.

A case study of shared decision making guided by the patient values.

Geographic disparities in availability of organs for transplant have spawned for-profit companies that help patients get on waitlists in more than one region and arrange travel for them if an organ becomes available.

Web-based physician rating sites are part of a multi-decade cultural shift in the relationship between physicians, patients, and society. But a system in which “patient’s orders” reign is just as lopsided as one that puts “doctor’s orders” in the driver’s seat.