As physicians we decide which tests or treatments go on the bill but have little idea how our decisions impact what patients pay. Now patients, payers, and policymakers are demanding that we consider the cost of our recommendations.
AMA Journal of Ethics editor Audiey Kao, MD, PhD, interviewed Richard Pan, MD, MPH, about how, as a physician and legislator, he seeks to protect public health in light of recurrent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases.
Nisha Quasba joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Elliot Vice: “What Should Prescribers and Policy Makers Know About US Drug Importation?”
Thomas W. LeBlanc, MD, MA and Amy P. Abernethy, MD, PhD
One strategy to promote adherence is the use of “care pathways,” effectively roadmaps that seek to standardize cancer treatment on the basis of some agreed-upon set of guidelines within a particular center or group of patients.
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.
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.