Dr Jane Lee joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Drs Gabriel Robles and Latoya Small: “What Should Students Learn About the Importance of Cultural Brokering in Immigrant Communities?”
The objective is to compare the costs of providing the same level of quality. When resource-use and quality measures are juxtaposed, the resources used to provide the same level of quality can be compared.
The communication gulf is not only one of language, but also one of culture, understood broadly. And, despite the priority of medical concerns, every effort should be made to obtain consent consistent with appropriate care.
An undercurrent in all debates about allocation of health care resources to the poor is the matter of access to and coverage of health care for immigrants, particularly low-income and undocumented ones.
Shivan J. Mehta, MD, MBA and David A. Asch, MD, MBA
Outcome-based payment more closely aligns payments with what patients want, which is better health rather than more health care. But these approaches remain challenging to implement.
Measuring outcomes alone is not the answer. There should be a way to reward the doctor for educating a patient about lifestyle modifications and then documenting that the care provided followed patient preferences.
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.