Article explains the right granted to state public health agencies by the Supreme Court in Jacobson v Massachusetts to mandate vaccination in the presence of actual or threatened danger to the health of its residents from infectious disease.
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.
The ongoing anthrax vaccination case, Doe v Rumsfeld, tests whether the military can require participation in and punish refusal of a vaccination program while waiving informed consent.
Raphael P. Viscidi, MD and Keerti V. Shah, MD, DrPH
The arguments for mandatory vaccination with human papillomavirus vaccine differs from the justification for mandatory use of vaccines that protect against more easily transmitted diseases.
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.
Drs Lynne Fehrenbacher and Leah Leonard-Kandarapally join Ethics Talk to discuss key roles of infectious disease pharmacists in antimicrobial stewardship.