As larger organizations become more influential in the health care sector, the Code can help physicians navigate those organizations’ influence on their practices.
Upcoding and misrepresenting clinical information constitute fraud, cost a lot, and can result in patient harm and unnecessary procedures and prescriptions.
Corporatization in health care has complicated clinicians’ and organizations’ efforts to balance interests of individual patients against an organization’s bottom line.
AMA J Ethics. 2020; 22(3):E187-192. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.187.
Legacy patients are so-called because their opioid use behaviors express past, aggressive opioid prescribing by a clinician. Managing their pain and dependence justly is ethically complex.