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.
This process of developing EBM-based guidelines and applying them to clinical care highlights the tension between generating unbiased knowledge based on statistical aggregation and the application of this information to individual patients.
The Anesthesiology Quality Institute contributes both to local quality improvement in the practice of anesthesiology through data collection and establishment of benchmarks and to patient safety in partnership with the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(3):248-252. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.3.pfor1-1503.
When identifying underrepresented subgroups deserving of special recruitment efforts for research participation, social determinants of health other than race should be given more consideration.
Well designed and effectively implemented ACOs should help those who deliver primary care become trusted elicitors of informed patient preferences and knowledgeable coordinators of care.
Some behavioral economists caution that, as ACOs proliferate, their focus on financial incentives could compromise hospitals’ mission and organizational behaviors.