Physicians tend to rely on diagnostic criteria, including BMI, that can influence patients’ access to care, referrals, and insurance coverage for indicated interventions.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(7):E507-513. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.507.
Diagnostic utility of weight and body mass index is widely overestimated, and their use as health and wellness measures can be sources of iatrogenic harm.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(7):E540-544. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.540.
Dr Kimberly A. Singletary joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Marshall H. Chin: “What Should Antiracist Payment Reform Look Like?”
Dr Jonathan Treem joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Drs Joel Yager and Jennifer L. Gaudiani: “A Life-Affirming Palliative Care Model for Severe and Enduring Anorexia Nervosa.”
Learn about the development of the systems for delivery and reimbursement of health care in the U.S. from the unregulated free-market state in 1908 to the complex, highly managed state in which it exists in 2008.
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.
Support for the argument that preimplantation genetic diagnosis followed by selection and implantation of an embryo with a trait that many consider a disability, e.g., deafness, achondroplasia, does not harm the child that develops from the implanted embryo.
Physicians who specialize in assisted reproductive technology should advise parents-to-be of the health and psychosocial risks of preimplantation sex selection for nonmedical reasons.
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.