If wealth screening and patient care must be mixed, they would be safer and more effective if guided by a policy developed with input from physicians.

Review of an article that takes the position that the hospital/physician-employee relationship can work if it is built on the socially directed ideals both parties share.

Medical secret shoppers hired by an insurance company are more likely to be used for economic profiling of providers than for quality improvement, which would be better served by secret shoppers hired by the provider.

Publicizing physician ordering information as a way of peer-pressuring hospital employees into cutting costs is likely to have unintended consequences.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics’ opinions on the physician as businessperson.

There are few situations in which the standard of care is so clear-cut as to preclude physician judgment. Assessing the degree of need (not just the standard of care) when asking a patient to spend money requires judgment.

Medical secret shoppers hired by an insurance company are more likely to be used for economic profiling of providers than for quality improvement, which would be better served by secret shoppers hired by the provider.

Physician employment adds a practice management stakeholder to the patient-physician encounter, a stakeholder whose financial interests differ from those of physicians in solo or group practice.

N-of-1 trials bring the rigor of research to an individual patient's clinical benefit.