Is this a conflict over a team member’s practice style or is it a breach professional boundaries? Is it appropriate for team members to make this judgment, or should it instead come from the team leader?
The picture that emerges from study of physician economic behavior is mixed, but from the intensity of responses by some professional societies to Medicare's coding modifier proposal, it appears that economic incentives matter a lot to many of their members.
Physicians working in close-knit communities, whether small towns or urban neighborhoods, have to manage relationships with people who may be simultaneously patients and neighbors, friends, and business associates.
Many patients in settings where residents operate can only afford to seek care in a public hospital. The hospital, faculty, and resident surgeon must find ways to minimize the risk to those patients.
Thomas W. LeBlanc, MD, MA, MHS and Arif H. Kamal, MD, MBA, MHS
Clinical trials should assess patients’ distress and test interventions to address it, just as they assess adverse events and test novel therapeutic agents.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(5):460-466. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.5.stas1-1705.
The physician must consider the potential benefits of the new procedure and then determine, through discussion with the patient, what value the patient places on those specific benefits.