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.
Disparities in children’s mental health care could be addressed through expansion of school-based programs via passage of the Mental Health in Schools Act.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(12):1218-1224. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.12.pfor1-1612.
Efforts are underway to make posttraumatic stress disorder a condition for which the Veterans Administration will authorize coverage for use of service dogs.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(6):547-552. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.6.hlaw1-1506.
In Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., the Supreme Court ruled that synthetically created DNA is patentable, but the isolation of unaltered gene sequences is not.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(9):849-853. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.9.hlaw1-1509.
Publicizing physician ordering information as a way of peer-pressuring hospital employees into cutting costs is likely to have unintended consequences.
Movements to deinstitutionalize people with mental illness and to make institutionalization more legally difficult have resulted in a lack of space and resources for the care of those with severe mental illness, and many have ended up in jails and prisons.
Laurel J. Lyckholm, MD and Arwa K. Aburizik, MD, MS
Decision-making capacity can be preserved in patients with mental illness and should be formally assessed in the context of their values and past decisions.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(5):444-453. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.5.ecas4-1705.