James Mills Jr., MD, a founder of emergency medicine, believed he could have greater impact on medical care for the poor in his city by giving up his practice and working in the emergency room full time.
Quality improvement initiatives in clinical medicine are part research and part patient care and pose challenges to traditional forms of ethical oversight.
The future success of the Affordable Care Act depends on doctors' willingness to take the lead in identifying reforms that will lead to high-quality, cost-effective health care.
Valuable lessons for the accountable care organization model can be gleaned from Medicare's Physician Group Practice Demonstration, but, until it proves broadly successful, other strategies to curb Medicare spending must be identified.
Medical stewardship is a way of describing a relatively new obligation to maximize health care resources. A professionwide conversation about its meaning and value is needed.