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.
Health care professionals’ use of social media can pose ethical challenges related to the boundary between professional and personal identities, privacy, confidentiality, and the trustworthiness of health care professionals.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(11):1009-1018. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.11.peer1-1511.
A requirement to uphold the confidentiality of information shared in the physician-patient relationship is a central tenet of medical professionalism that, while at risk and undermined in various ways in modern medicine, has been consistently endorsed from the time of Hippocrates.
The phrase “I take Lipitor instead of a generic” was embedded in the public consciousness through an advertising campaign that featured Robert Jarvik, credited with the invention of the artificial heart.
When assessing new techniques for use with marginalized populations, it is critical to consider costs and benefits free of unexamined biases. Anything less is discriminatory and unjust.