Physicians need to be aware of and guard against the liability risks of having nonphysician clinicians provide services that do not meet the standard of care of the practice due to the staff member's inadequate experience or supervision.
Appropriate use of the pay-for-performance system may improve quality of care by counteracting physician incentives to overtreat in fee-for-service situations or undertreat in capitation plans.
Drs Lynne Fehrenbacher and Leah Leonard-Kandarapally join Ethics Talk to discuss key roles of infectious disease pharmacists in antimicrobial stewardship.
Several recent court cases illustrate how some states are attempting to mandate physician reporting of all underage sexual activity as instances of child abuse.
The objective is to compare the costs of providing the same level of quality. When resource-use and quality measures are juxtaposed, the resources used to provide the same level of quality can be compared.
Measuring outcomes alone is not the answer. There should be a way to reward the doctor for educating a patient about lifestyle modifications and then documenting that the care provided followed patient preferences.
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.