To be a useful tool for assessing quality of physician care, pay-for-performance must be designed to include process measures and to not penalize physicians for treating patients with difficult-to-manage conditions.
A case that illustrates how Western medicine's body or mind approach to diagnosis and treatment can differ from that of many patients from non-Western cultures.
Discussion of and expansion upon a journal article that explains how community-based research can also teach the researchers lessons in culturally effective health care.
An examination of how a doctor should counsel a pregnant woman through the ethical and medical challenges of being diagnosed with stage II cervical cancer.
Physicians are held legally responsible if patients are harmed by not receiving the care that is required, even when the restriction of that care is imposed by a third-party payor.
Physicians should help patients resolve the issue of medical debt by advocating for change in the health care system on a local and national level and implementing charity care within their offices.
Appropriate use of the pay-for-performance system may improve quality of care by counteracting physician incentives to overtreat in fee-for-service situations or undertreat in capitation plans.
Physicians have a responsibility to practice palliative medicine so they can appropriately care for their dying patients and help them achieve their end-of-life goals.