AMA Journal of Ethics^®

Particularly in a small community, patients may want to avoid the social stigma of seeking mental health care by receiving it from their primary care physician—who may know them well enough to have some insights an unfamiliar specialist would not.

Each time-saving, patient-safety-guarding feature in digital health care technology brings with it opportunities to offer unnecessary care, reap unnecessary payment, and add to the country's overall cost of health care.

Health information technology, like prior technological advances in medicine, can improve patient care and enhance the patient-physician relationship if used properly and thoughtfully.

Determining the severity of a breach of medical privacy, and therefore whether or not it will be reported to the US Department of Health and Human Services, by the patient's reaction puts the hospital's interest in avoiding reporting breaches above the patient's best interests.

The social institutions of medicine and the state have a complex history of interaction in which doctors have been the originators of political ideals, goals, and social change but equally often have found themselves to be instruments of political authority.