Countering the prevailing thought that more medical testing and treatment is always better can be achieved by creating a forum for open discussion of costs and value to prevent patient harm from overuse.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(11):1079-1081. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.11.mnar1-1511.
Dr David Marcus joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article: “When, If Ever, Is It Appropriate to Regard a Patient as ‘Too Medically Complex’ for One Inpatient Service, But Not Another?”
Constraints on hospitalists and surgeons and restricted orthopedic admission criteria can exacerbate patients’ distress that comes from clinicians’ disagreements.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(12):E873-877. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.873.
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.
Publicizing physician ordering information as a way of peer-pressuring hospital employees into cutting costs is likely to have unintended consequences.