When a seriously ill mature minor and his parent disagree about his receiving an experimental intervention, who should decide what treatment he will receive?
The use of coded patient data for reimbursement purposes can tempt clinicians to exaggerate the severity of the patient's condition, skewing the accuracy of the data and interfering with clinical decision support and research.
Rachel O. Reid, MD, MS and Ateev Mehrotra, MD, MPH
An effective policy regarding retail clinics in a primary care practice should address patients' need for timely and convenient acute care and build capacity for enhanced access to acute care within the primary care clinic itself.
Patients who have been encouraged to think of themselves as consumers and a medical system that is driven by individual demands rather than big-picture planning can undermine fairness in the distribution of vaccines.
Health information technology, like prior technological advances in medicine, can improve patient care and enhance the patient-physician relationship if used properly and thoughtfully.
The addition of IT to our health care system should not be viewed as merely a technological upgrade, but rather a fundamental change in our approach to the practice of medicine.