Podcast:

Further Observations On Lying Doctors [ 15:39 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (550)

In his last post, DrRich analyzed whether the young Wisconsin doctors who stood out on street corners proudly offering fake “sick excuses” to protesting teachers were engaging in an act of civil disobedience. DrRich respectfully kept an open mind on this question, but after careful deliberation concluded that it is very unlikely that their actions constituted classic civil disobedience as espoused by Thoreau or Gandhi.

Instead, these doctors were, in a professional capacity, lying. They did not lie in any truly malicious way, however. They lied because they have been trained to believe in a higher cause than mere professional ethics, namely, the cause of social justice. They lied in full confidence that telling lies to advance such a noble cause is a natural duty of the medical profession. They never expected to be criticized for it (except perhaps by Rush Limbaugh and sundry teabaggers and the like), and they almost certainly will be stunned into indignant incoherence if they end up actually receiving the full punishments their actions allow.

But what really interests DrRich is the near-perfect silence we have seen from the mainstream news media regarding this sad episode. While it’s easy to find stories about the phony sick excuses all over Fox News and conservative websites, major outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CBS and NBC – sources one might expect to express at least some sympathy for these doctors and their work to advance a just cause – have reported next to nothing about it. When a left-leaning mainstream outlet does report on the episode (for instance, this article appearing in the Atlantic), rather than expressing any support for the Wisconsin doctors, they express at least mild dismay. It seems plain to DrRich that the mainstream media wish the whole thing hadn’t happened, and that perhaps their silence might help it go away as soon as possible.

So here we’ve got a small cadre of youthful and idealistic physicians, behaving in a manner entirely consistent with what they’ve just learned during their medical training, and not only are they facing formal investigations and potential punishment, but also the very people and organizations whom they were surely counting on for support have retreated into an embarrassed silence, or worse, criticism.

What gives?

What gives, DrRich thinks, is the great discomfort being experienced by left-leaning people and organizations by such a blatant, public display of the New Medical Ethics and its ultimate implications. That is, while they don’t actually object to the fact that the doctors were committing professional fraud for the advancement of what passes for social justice, they wish they hadn’t done it out in the open.  Calling attention to the fact that doctors will lie so readily might cause folks to want to take a closer look.

And since lying doctors are part of the plan, such scrutiny might turn out to be inconvenient. You see, Dear Reader, whether the payer is a private insurance company or the Feds, a principle mechanism of healthcare cost-cutting is to coerce the doctors to ration healthcare at the bedside. As a result, many more times per day than one would care to think, doctors are being placed into the unfortunate position of deciding, not whether to lie, but to whom to lie. Do they lie to the insurance companies and Medicare (in order to give one of their patients a needed medical service which, according to insurance company rules or government “guidelines,” they may not have)? Or instead, do they lie to the patient (usually committing a lie of omission, in which they fail to tell patients about some needed and available but forbidden medical service)?

The answer is – both. DrRich, as usual, backs up his outlandish generalizations with data:

Item 1: In a survey conducted by the American Medical Association’s Institute for Ethics, published in the April 12, 2000, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, 39% of American doctors admitted that they sometimes or very often manipulated reports to their patients’ health plans so their patients might gain coverage for needed medical care. These manipulations included exaggerating the severity of the patients’ condition, changing the billing diagnosis, or reporting symptoms the patient did not have. And 72% admitted using one of these tactics at least once in the past year. More than a quarter said that gaming the system was necessary in order to provide high quality care to their patients, and 15% asserted that it was ethical.

This survey elicited a deluge of criticism against the cheating doctors. Ethicists called for doctors to stop applying “insular” ethical norms and to begin using the norms that professional ethicists have long established against lying to health plans (which are busily engaged in covert rationing). Similarly, the AMA and the American College of Physicians have published strongly worded statements opposing the manipulation of reimbursement rules. And the federal government has made such “misstatements” to health plans a federal crime, punishable by huge fines, jail terms, and loss of license.

That doctors continue to do this anyway, DrRich has heard some physicians express, reflects that many physicians consider lying to a health plan to be a sin on par with the sin of lying to the SS when they knock on the door to ask if you are hiding a family of Jews in the attic.

Item 2: Another survey, published in the July/August, 2003, issue of Health Affairs, reported that nearly 33% of American doctors admit that they routinely withhold from their patients pertinent information about optimal medical treatments, because they suspect the patients’ health plans won’t cover those treatments. In response to this survey, the American Association of Health Plans, the group representing the very organizations that were pulling out all the stops to make sure that doctors do exactly what this study confirms they are doing, expressed shock at these results, and told the AMA News at the time that AAHP officials “actually find it difficult to believe that that’s going on.” (They found it difficult, no doubt, because they observed just how rapidly spending was still accelerating.) Meanwhile, the authors of the study could only conclude (with seeming surprise) that doctors are “rationing by omission” on their own volition.

These two surveys reveal some of the confusion and frustration being felt by doctors as a result of coercion to withhold medical services, and the guidance they’re getting from their professional organizations as to what to do about those rules. How are they to square those rules and that guidance with their time-honored obligation to always do what’s best for their patients?

So what’s a doctor to do when a patient needs a treatment but they know the health plan won’t pay for it? There are only three choices:

1) Tell the health plan whatever you must in order to get the needed treatment for the patient.
2) Don’t tell the patient about the treatment since they can’t have it anyway.
3) Tell the patient about the treatment they need, and then tell them they can’t have it.

The most truthful thing would be to choose Door Number 3. After all, a patient has a right to know what medical treatment he needs, whether or not he’s allowed to have it. Informing a patient that his insurance won’t pay for the needed treatment gives him useful information. It lets him know that his health plan is not adequate to his needs and gives him an opportunity to respond appropriately to that information. For instance, a patient might appeal to the health plan directly, seek intervention by his local Congressperson, or ask his employer (who is the health plan’s true customer), to intervene on his behalf. He can even raise the funds to pay for the therapy himself (and if he is not a Medicare patient perhaps it will be legal for him to purchase it).

What patients actually do when doctors choose Door Number 3, however, is to beg, demand, threaten, implore, and plead for the doctor to do something to fix things, since after all, it is the doctor who started the problem in the first place by insisting that this forbidden therapy is the only one that will do. So, the moment doctors choose Door 3, they are placed under incredible pressure to go back and choose again – Door Number 1, their patients are communicating to them, is actually the correct choice. This, plus wanting to avoid all the anguish and drama that follows telling the truth, leads doctors who are inclined to lie to health plans (and thus risk angering the entities that determine their ability to make a living, not to mention committing a federal crime), to choose Door Number 1 in the first place. If doctors are not inclined to risk their livelihoods and freedom by deceiving health plans, they will probably simply default to Door Number 2 – rationing by omission.

The above two items reflect the proportion of doctors willing to admit in a survey which group they routinely lie to – health plans or patients. Most of the other doctors, one suspects, would just rather not say.

Item 3: In 2000, the AMA filed an amicus brief with the Illinois Supreme Court on behalf of a Dr. Portes, asserting that doctors have no duty to inform their patients when health plans have given them financial incentives to withhold medical care. Apparently a patient of Dr. Portes died of a heart attack shortly after the doctor allegedly refused to refer him to a cardiologist. As it turned out, the patient’s health plan apparently had agreed to pay the doctor’s medical group 60% of any funds not used on referrals to specialists. A lower court in Illinois had found that Portes had a duty to disclose this financial relationship to patients, since it might clearly impact their interpretation of his medical recommendations, and Portes appealed. In this appeal, the AMA sided with the doctor.

The AMA said in its amicus brief that the obligation imposed on doctors by the lower court amounted to an “insurmountable burden,” since it was hard for doctors to keep track of all the sundry ways that health plans might induce them to behave in this way or that way, and besides, the need to disclose would impinge on the doctor’s valuable time with the patient and therefore disrupt the doctor-patient relationship. Interestingly, the AMA’s own Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) had previously written that, “physicians must assure disclosure of any financial inducements that may tend to limit the diagnostic and therapeutic alternatives that are offered to patients….” In explaining why its amicus brief differed from the opinion of its own Ethics Council, the AMA explained that its CEJA standard was just an ethical one and not a legal one.

So what we have here is: a) A health plan induces doctors to withhold medical care; b) a doctor acts on that inducement; c) as a result, predictable harm comes to a patient; d) after which, the doctor and the AMA declare that he shouldn’t have to inform patients of all relevant information because; e) to do so would harm the doctor-patient relationship.

This is all just too precious for words.

One can easily see how very confusing it has become for doctors to decide just when they must lie, and whom they must lie to.

Obviously, doctors are now in a position where, just to get by, it behooves them to lie repeatedly to either patients, or to insurers, or both. Their ethical obligation to always be straight with the patient has been turned on its head by the new ethical obligation to do what’s right for the collective.  In more cases than doctors – or the insurance companies and government health plans which (between them) “own” the doctors lock, stock and barrel – would like to admit, lying has become a way of life for many in the medical profession. It is not something they’re proud of (well, at least the older ones aren’t proud of it). It’s just something that is necessary for survival. Most doctors, to their credit, hate this. It’s one of the reasons so many doctors are so frustrated with their lot.

In any case, this is not a truth to which anyone would like to call the public’s attention. So for those callow youths in Wisconsin to don their white coats and go out to the street corners, in front of the cameras, to commit lie, after lie, after lie, and to do so with such obvious pride, and such obvious confidence that what they were doing was not only right but was expected of them as members of the medical profession – that indeed, they could do no less – was to call unwanted attention to what has become an unfortunate truth about our healthcare system and what it has done to our doctors.

No wonder the mainstream media largely ignored this embarrassing episode. Fortunately, the public (despite the best efforts of Fox News) still has not realized how generalized the problem is. The sooner Fox stops fulminating about it and moves on to whatever the next left-wing travesty turns out to be, the better. And perhaps no permanent harm will yet be done to the public’s perception of the truthiness of the medical profession.

Podcast:

Were the Wisconsin Doctors Engaging In Civil Disobedience? [ 6:54 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (464)

A minor firestorm has erupted regarding those doctors in Wisconsin this week who were handing out fake “sick excuses” to demonstrating teachers, Fox news producers, Andrew Breitbart, and, apparently, anyone else who had some use for one.

Indeed, there has been more outrage about this episode than DrRich would have thought. Conservative commentators, of course, were predictably apoplectic about the sight of these callow youths, preening in their white coats, abusing and debasing the sacred trust which has been granted to them by virtue of their profession. There’s nothing surprising about that. But even most of the more mainstream commentators expressed at least a slight bit of discomfort about the actions these doctors were taking, even if they were doing it for a very good and noble cause.

Only a very few seemed to endorse their actions completely, explaining that these doctors are engaging in classic civil disobedience, and that, by standing on street corners in their white coats repeatedly committing felonies with the cameras whirring, their behavior is every bit as deserving of our approbation as the actions we admire so much of Thoreau or Gandhi. DrRich is open to this explanation.

Civil disobedience, of course, is to a) openly and non-violently disobey a certain law that you consider unjust, b) to admit to the operative authority, upon apprehension, that you intentionally broke the law specifically because you consider it unjust, and finally c) to passively accept whatever punishment the authority hands out to you. These doctors have executed step “a” flawlessly, and DrRich waits with interest to see whether they will successfully complete steps “b” and “c.”

Unfortunately, it seems far more likely to DrRich that these young doctors were not engaging in classic civil disobedience. Rather, they were simply exercising their conviction that there are causes far more important than any old-fashioned and outdated notions of professional integrity, and furthermore, that honoring those higher causes is indeed an inherent part of the more modern, up to date formulation of the medical profession’s ethical obligations. DrRich, obviously refers to the fact that since 2002, the medical profession has formally adopted an obligation to work for the cause of social justice, and has given that obligation equal weight (in writing) and more weight (in practice) than its obligation to individual patients, or to certain other classic obligations of the profession, such as always being truthful in the discharge of one’s professional duties.

And that’s just what these doctors were doing. They were weighing the venial sin of writing fake sick excuses (surely a minor infraction by any objective measure), against the much higher cause of social justice.* In this light, the “right thing to do” simply seemed obvious to them. And so they went out, in full medical regalia, to do it. They did not expect criticism, but rather, they expected praise.  And they certainly did not expect to be threatened with punishment.
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*DrRich asks his readers to ignore the question of whether the positive feedback loop that has developed between public service unions and public officials, wherein those unions are largely responsible for electing the officials with whom they then engage in “collective bargaining,” actually constitutes social justice, or a subtle form of tyranny. That it is social justice is a fact which Americans are expected to accept at face value, and for the purpose of this commentary (and only for that purpose) let us accept it.
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So there was no civil disobedience here, at least, not the classic civil disobedience of Thoreau or Gandhi. These young doctors had no thought of risking their personal freedom, or anything else they hold dear, for a higher cause.  They went forth to show their solidarity with The Cause, with every assurance that their actions were entirely consistent with the New Ethics of their profession. That for many Progressives they have become heroes confirms this conviction.

But the moment it occurred to them that not everybody agreed with what they were doing, or understood why they were doing it, or expressed that perhaps there should be repercussions, they had second thoughts. And they did not remain at their stations, bravely flaunting the law, Gandhi-like, until the authorities showed up to drag them away, but rather, once they understood that they might get into trouble, they hightailed it the hell out of there.

So at this point, sadly, DrRich remains doubtful about the civil disobedience angle.

Especially since the events of last week, it would be absurd for DrRich to think that everybody is out to get him. Still, it seems plain that, of late, not all individuals enjoy his efforts here at the Covert Rationing Blog.

Two years ago, for instance, DrRich was “invited” to testify as a witness before a federal grand jury in a matter involving one of his consulting clients. While under oath, DrRich was caused to understand that the Feds (at least certain members of the DOJ) are well aware of this blog, and of the general tenor of its content. The impression left by this experience makes DrRich doubt whether many of his fans come from that particular precinct.

Further, the CRB has been the victim of two targeted denial-of-service attacks just in the last several months. Perhaps this is a common experience for healthcare bloggers, but then again, perhaps not. Finally, there’s the fact that last May (some readers may recall) a nasty hacking exploit completely trashed the CRB at the server level, resulting in the loss of the first three years of DrRich’s endeavors here (which, some have said, is the greatest tragedy to befall posterity since the burning of the Library at Alexandria).

And so, Dear Reader, while DrRich is certainly happy to be hosting Grand Rounds for the fourth time, and is particularly delighted with the quality of postings which he has the honor of featuring this week, it occurs to him that hosting an event with such high (and well-deserved) visibility might draw certain “extra attention” here.  So perhaps you had better read this quickly.

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We begin with HealthAGEnda, the John A. Hartford Foundation blog, which is posting a remarkable series of articles by Amy Berman, a senior program officer at that foundation, who has recently been diagnosed with an incurable form of breast cancer. Ms. Berman discusses very openly and frankly both the good and the bad aspects of the American healthcare system she is encountering  as she deals with this likely fatal illness. In this post, the second in a series, Ms. Berman talks about her ordeal in confirming what she already strongly suspected was a very bad diagnosis, and describes the comfort she experienced, while “meeting the enemy,” from compassionate but frank healthcare professionals. She had a much less favorable experience, which she describes in her first post, demonstrating just how devastating it can be for a patient to encounter a one-size-fits all physician. The impact such an encounter has on a patient who needs real medical help is especially relevant in an era in which doctors are being urged (coerced) into following just such an approach. Ms. Berman is an extremely brave and gracious woman, and the important insights she is providing in her efforts to chronicle her illness ought to be read by every health professional.

Henry Stern of Insureblog discusses the documented, systematic mistreatment of the elderly under the British National Health Service. Stern points out that while similar mistreatment of the elderly also happens in the American healthcare system, here it is sometimes not systematic, but rather is most often due to sloppiness or inadvertent error, and further, when it happens remedial actions (such as lawsuits) are often available. In contrast (evidence suggests), treating the elderly badly in the NHS seems to have become virtual policy. DrRich, of course, longtime president and sole member of Future Old Farts of America (FOFA), is confident that nothing of the sort will ever happen here in the U.S. where the government always has our best interests in mind, and he is sure that when government officials refer to the NHS as an ideal to which we should all aspire, they are probably not talking about this part of it.

Writing on a related topic, Julie Rosen of Bedside Manner tells about steps doctors and families can take to resolve disagreements on how aggressive one ought to be when deciding on the use of certain treatments for elderly and mentally incapacitated patients. DrRich finds Ms. Rosen’s recommendations appropriate, since all of them take place at the local level, with full participation of the patient’s loved ones, and do not (explicitly, at least) involve the heavy hand of any Central Authority.

And still speaking of the role of authority in deciding on aggressive treatments, The ACP Internist posts a news report about a court-ordered spinal operation on a 16-year old who was injured during a wrestling competition. Neither the young man nor his parents wanted the operation, which they feared might cause paralysis.  (Apparently, they were actually paying attention during the “informed consent” process.) Further, as the mother apparently demonstrated in a video shown on local TV, her son had a “full range of motion” prior to surgery. Nonetheless, the young man was removed to protective custody, and the court-ordered surgery was performed (apparently successfully, thank goodness, or else this might have turned into a controversial decision). One hopes the judge, in making his determination that the family was not acting reasonably, was not swayed by their expressed partiality to herbal medicine and homeopathy. Wacko as such practices may be, they do not appear particularly relevant in this case, given the family’s seemingly cogent argument that the risk/benefit calculation, as it had been presented to them by medical professionals, simply did not meet their threshold for such aggressive treatment. Apparently, it met the state’s.

The ACP Hospitalist offers a post from a doctor at Grady Hospital entitled: “10 ways to know that the nurses hate you.” These 10 clues as to nurses’ disapprobation are both amusing and true. However, after observing for over 30 years the kinds of behaviors to which nurses are forced to resort when they see that things are greatly amiss, but at the same time they are powerless to directly intervene, DrRich thinks this post more accurately ought to be entitled, “10 ways to know that the nurses think you are killing your patients.” The nurses may or may not actually hate the doctor for it, but they wish he/she would stop – and here are 10 ways in which they may often express that wish.

While some states are big troublemakers (and you know who you are), others are moving to implement provisions of Obamacare just as the Central Authority has decreed. Louise from Colorado Health Insurance Insider tells us that Colorado Senate Bill 168 was introduced last week to create the nonprofit healthcare cooperative which is required by all states under Obamacare. (Shouldn’t somebody tell the Colorado state senators that writing long tracts like this in ALL CAPS is considered impolite, as it is the documentary equivalent of shouting?) Louise notes that the healthcare cooperatives mandated by Obamacare may help to reduce the number of uninsured, but adds that Obamacare “will do little to address a range of other problems, including rising healthcare costs, the unaffordability of healthcare even for people who have health insurance, over-utilization of care, and the problems created when we link health insurance to employment.” While these are all legitimate points, regular readers will know how little DrRich himself goes in for such grousing.

Obamacare, after all, does so much! As a case in point, David Harlow at HealthBlawg writes about Accountable Care Organizations, a new entity which figures prominently under Obamacare, and which will be a chief vehicle for controlling the cost and quality of healthcare (i.e., for controlling physicians’ behavior). A lot of scary things have been written about ACOs (including, truth to tell, things written here at the CRB), but Harlow points out that ACOs might not turn out to be such a bad idea after all. For evidence, he points to some of the successes realized by AQCs (Alternative Quality Contracts) in Massachusetts, under admittedly favorable practice environments, and notes that some of these successes might be translated directly to ACOs. DrRich hopes he is right. But it is a little worrisome that nobody, including Harlow (as he himself allows), really knows what ACOs will end up looking like. Their structure is, as we speak, being fought over by numerous federal agencies (like a carcass being fought over by a pack of dogs), and among these agencies (DrRich shudders to contemplate) is the Department of Justice. But Mr. Harlow knows far more about this stuff than DrRich, so let’s all hope for the best. Short of defanging Obamacare, that’s about all one can do.

Amy Tenderich of Diabetes Mine submits a guest post from Valentine’s Day, written by Wendy Strgar, entitled “Healthy Sex, Healthy Love.” Ms. Strgar, who is known in some circles (circles of which DrRich himself is innocent) as a “loveologist,” and who markets the sexual-aid products to prove it, actually makes a pretty convincing argument that sexual activity can be an important part of reducing one’s risk for all sorts of medical problems. So: Are you one of those folks who has thought about having more sex, but you’re just not sure the pay-off is worth all the trouble? Read this post.

Dr. Pullen at DrPullen.com posts about the problem of anti-personnel mines, which continue killing and maiming innocent people all over the world, and for decades after hostilities cease. He rightly thinks the US ought to do more to resolve this problem, and in particular, he decries apparently serious suggestions some have made that we ought to deploy mines on our southern border to prevent illegal crossings. DrRich agrees with Dr. Pullen, but does not believe that mining the U.S. border will ever become a serious consideration (unless it is to prevent American citizens from sneaking southward to receive black market healthcare).

Doug Perednia at The Road to Hellth is writing a fascinating series on the wonders of Pay for Performance. In this, his second offering, Perednia provides some pretty overwhelming evidence, including evidence from studies which proponents use to justify P4P, that P4P demonstrably does nothing useful. Actually, DrRich should qualify that statement: It does nothing useful in terms of improving clinical outcomes. What it does do (as Perednia demonstrates) is to forcibly distract physicians from listening to their patients, to fully consume all the time allotted for a patient visit, and to actively discourage other forms of doctor-patient interactions which might lead to additional healthcare expenditures. So despite a now-well-documented lack of any improvement in patient outcomes, P4P is in fact achieving its actual designed ends, and thus must be counted a great success.

Dr. Joe Smith, who writes the Dr. Unplugged blog (a Medscape blog which requires free registration), travels the globe seeking out emerging technologies related to wireless healthcare. In his latest article Smith laments the fact that, so far, the healthcare consumer has completely missed out on the ongoing wireless revolution, a revolution that has greatly empowered consumers in virtually every other economic sphere. He concludes that despite this slow penetration, wireless technology inevitably will also transform the lives of healthcare consumers. DrRich agrees that this outcome is indeed inevitable, but thinks it may take a while. Resistance to the empowerment of individual healthcare consumers is deeply entrenched, massively well-funded, extraordinarily powerful, amazingly ruthless, and very widely distributed (from the beltway to the bedside). Such resistance is akin to the all-pervasive power of the Church 500 years ago, a power that was eventually broken, but that required the technology (printing press), the killer app (Bibles printed in the vernacular), the catalyst (Martin Luther’s 95 theses), the poorly-expressed but ultimately deep-seated desire of the populace for the knowledge being offered, and the fortitude to persevere through 300 years of reformational bloodshed. So, yes, history ultimately will win out with regard to wireless healthcare, but one fears it may take more than just the healthcare equivalent of the iPod or Facebook to see it happen.

The anonymous author of The Notwithstanding Blog is a Canadian medical student with a background in economics. In the short time this blog has been around, he (or she) has done some very cogent writing applying economic insights to medicine. The featured post describes why medical ethicists (despite their constant yammering about honoring the autonomy of the individual) almost always decide specific ethical questions the other way, that is, against individual autonomy. DrRich, in his ham-fisted style of analysis, always tends to blame this phenomenon on the fact that Progressives in recent decades have largely taken over the Ethicists’ house, just as they have taken over in most academic fields, and that Progressives as part of their DNA must always come down on the side of the collective. But Dr. Notwithstanding offers what is likely a better explanation, based on economics (the science of human behavior) instead of on political ideology. As you’ll see, in addition to being an original thinker Dr. N is an engaging writer. You should give this blog a try.

In stark contrast to Notwithstanding’s anonymous blog is Carolyn Roy-Bornstein‘s eponymous one. Here she describes one of the absurdities doctors see every day with the modern-day electronic medical records which are being adopted all over the place, with great fanfare (and with public subsidies), to streamline healthcare, reduce redundancy, eliminate waste, and assure quality care. Namely, while these new electronic records may greatly simplify the lives of the federal regulators and the forensic accountants who keep track of which doctors are being naughty and which are being nice, they often gum up the works for the people on the ground who are actually trying to take care of sick people. EMRs can do this in many ways, and Dr. R-B nicely describes one of them: She laments the reams of redundant, boilerplate, tree-killing verbiage these records spit out, each and every day, for each and every patient, a characteristic which makes the formerly simple task of figuring out how the patient’s doing today a constant challenge, a perpetual exercise in patience and persistence. and a powerful attractor for medical errors. She ends by speculating whether it might make things easier to have somebody sing these records to her. A nice thought, but DrRich thinks it would not help. What you’d get is an early Phillip Glass composition, in which the same nonsense phrases are repeated over, and over, and over, and over. . .

The Happy Hospitalist discovers that latex examination gloves (powdered, one-size-fits-all, Spic and Span brand), are available at 10 for one dollar at the local dollar store. His discovery suggests a couple of things. As Happy points out, hospitals which are expected to survive on Medicaid payments now have someplace to shop. And, if you want to bring down the cost of healthcare products and services, simply make them available for direct purchase by consumers.

Carolyn Thomas of Heart Sisters writes of journalist Melissa Mia Hall who died in her Texas home in January after avoiding medical help for her severe and persistent chest pain (regarding which she wrote a running commentary to friends – and ultimately to posterity – via e-mail). Ms. Thomas concludes that had Ms. Hall had health insurance (which she did not), she likely would have done more than just document the progression of her fatal heart attack. DrRich has no personal knowledge of Ms. Hall, and so cannot contradict this conclusion, nor does he wish to. However, a recent survey by the American Heart Association showed that in 2009, only 50% of women (regardless of insurance status) said they would call 911 if they thought they might be having a heart attack. DrRich, who has long lamented the feminization of men in our society, now utters his dismay at the converse – the masculinization of women. Ladies, if you have symptoms suggestive of a heart attack, don’t try to tough it out. Call 911.

Steven Wilkins of The Mind Gap tells how sessions of culturally-sensitive “storytelling” can break down certain cognitive barriers for some patients, and more fully engage them in their medical treatment. Wisely, Wilkins is not suggesting that beleaguered PCPs develop a stable of appropriate yarns they can spin for their recalcitrant patients during the 7.5 minutes the Central Authority has allotted for each “patient encounter.” Rather, he has several helpful suggestions for incorporating such storytelling into existing systems, which would leave the doctors alone to do what they’re paid for – making little electronic chits on Pay for Performance checklists.

Vineet Arora at FutureDocs talks about the universally-recognized phenomenon of the over-ordering of radiological diagnostic tests, which is detrimental both to patients’ health and to the healthcare budget. She discusses the many reasons too many of these tests are ordered. It boils down to the fact that the healthcare system provides physicians with extraordinarily strong incentives, at many levels, NOT to rely on their clinical judgment, but instead, in order to optimize their odds of professional survival, to just go ahead and get the test. Unfortunately the solutions Dr. Arora suggests to this difficult problem do not hinge on restoring the doctor’s clinical judgment as a legitimate decision-making tool. (This is no fault of hers; to restore respect for the doctor’s clinical judgment would require a wholesale change in how the healthcare system now operates.)  Instead, she suggests counterbalancing the strong coercions doctors feel to order too many of these tests, with new, and equally strong, coercions not to. Laboratory rats faced with similar, unresolvable imperatives to respond to two opposite stimuli, of course, quickly die of the stress.

Dinah from Shrink Rap notes that the FDA is about to take an action that may effectively render electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) a thing of the past. Specifically, the FDA is likely to reclassify ECT machines (which have been in clinical use since long before the FDA controlled such things) as Class II medical devices. If so, then for these devices to remain on the market, the two companies that manufacture them would have to conduct expensive new clinical trials to document safety and efficacy within 30 months. Observers judge that these companies would not have the resources to do so. ECT is a highly controversial procedure, and there are vocal groups which are trying to ban it – but for some patients with severe depression, Dinah points out, ECT has been a very effective and potentially life-saving last resort therapy. These unfortunate patients, apparently, can now join all the others whose response to various treatments resides in the tail of the standard distribution curve, and for whom the tailored, individualized therapy they require will no longer be an option.  So they will just have to make do with the guideline-driven treatments that suit the average patient just fine. Nonetheless DrRich predicts this change can be implemented with minimal outcry, since severe depressives, being often imbued with great inanition, likely won’t complain very vociferously about it.

Speaking of shrinks, Philip Hickey of the Behaviorism and Mental Health Blog writes about his observations regarding how and why “mental illness” has become such a growth industry. He says, “’Mental illness’ is a spurious explanatory concept whose purpose is to medicalize for profit the ordinary problems of human existence which our ancestors tackled and resolved without drugs for thousands of years.” While DrRich might not buy his entire thesis, there is much more truth in what Hickey says than one would like to think.  Among other things, when healthcare becomes a right, then the more struggles of the normal human experience we decide to turn into a medical diagnosis, the more it becomes society’s obligation to alleviate those normal struggles. There is a natural endpoint to this process of over-medicalization, of course, but it is not pleasant to contemplate.

Dr. Wes speculates on what is really different about the new pacemaker leads which recently have been declared officially MRI-safe by the FDA. Wes suggests that much of the extraordinarily expensive and time-consuming effort that was made in obtaining the “MRI-safe” label had more to do with the incredible regulatory maze that had to be navigated, than with any actual engineering changes. DrRich, who a few years ago was peripherally involved as a consultant in a similar effort (with a different company), declares Dr.Wes’ speculation to be likely pretty accurate. But fear not, for Medicare will be reimbursing the manufacturer for its regulatory ordeal for many years to come.

The venerable DB of DB’s Medical Rants offers a timely rant about how those who create the clinical guidelines which dictate the practice of modern medicine often do so inadvisedly, and sometimes with their own (possibly cryptic) agenda in mind, and as a result of such guidelines, patients may die. DrRich himself has covered this same topic lately. DB’s commentary hits the mark.

Paul S. Auerbach of the Medicine for the Outdoors Blog provides this post on cholera vaccines. It turns out that cholera vaccination is a little less than straightforward, and given the relatively small amount of vaccine available worldwide, would not be suitable for wide-scale use. So as far as cholera prevention goes, pray for sanitation.

Rich Elmore and Paul Tuten at HealthcareTechnologyNews write the wonderful news that the Direct Project has launched. The Direct Project, they tell us, is an implementation of a secure, health-related e-mail standard designed to “allow health practitioners to securely exchange health data, medical records digitized to be easily shared between doctor’s offices, hospitals, benefit providers, government agencies and other health organizations, all across America.” This sounds like a pretty good idea, except perhaps for the “government agencies” part, since, for many of us, these are the very folks we’d least want looking at our most private personal information. As for the patients themselves, it is not clear whether they also will have ready access to all this extremely secure information about their own health, or whether instead they will have to wait until the information finally shows up on Wikileaks.

February 24 – DrRich has been petitioned by the authors to issue a correction for this last item. In order to do complete justice to them, DrRich reproduces their suggested correction in its entirety:

“The Direct Project encrypts the information being transmitted.  No one other than the intended received can get the information.  There is nothing stored using the Direct Project technologies – it serves only as a transport mechanism to enable, for example, a provider to securely send information to a consulting physician.  The goal is to replace the pervasive fax machine with something more secure, more modern and able to be used by healthcare stakeholders with the most basic technology (internet access and a PC) up to the most sophisticated user of an electronic health record.”

DrRich thanks the authors for correcting any misapprehensions he may have inadvertently introduced.  To be clear, when the Feds get your personal health information, and when you have difficulty obtaining it yourself, that will not be the fault of Direct Project, whose purpose is merely to assure that the data gets sent only to the person/agency which is targeted to receive it, and no one else.  DrRich leaves it as an exercise for his readers to determine whether his original commentary may still offer any value.

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Thanks for speed-reading Medical Grand Rounds this week.

Next week Grand Rounds will be hosted by The Examining Room of Dr. Charles.

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Podcast:

Can Advance Directives Be Salvaged? [ 17:31 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (272)

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This is the first in a series of articles on End-of-Life Care and Covert Rationing.  The second article can be found here.

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It is easy to have missed it, because it went by so quickly.

On January 1, the White House announced a new policy that would have paid doctors for discussing end-of-life planning during their Medicare patients’ annual “wellness visit.” Under this policy, physicians would be paid to encourage their patients to establish an advance directive, which would guide medical care if the patient became incapacitated from illness, and could no longer make medical decisions for him/herself.

But on January 5, the new policy was suddenly revoked. It was revoked, CMS lamely explained, because it had not been implemented using the correct process. But, as anyone would know who watched Congress make Obamacare the law of the land, this could not possibly have been the real reason.

The real reason, of course, has to do with the firestorm this new policy threatened to unleash, just as the House of Representatives was about to be taken over by the cretinous opposition party.

As regular readers will recall, the Obamacare bill originally included similar language on advance directives. Physicians were supposed to urge their patients, repeatedly if necessary, to establish advance directives, and their success in extracting advance directives from their patients was to be one of the “performance measures” by which doctors would be judged to be in good or bad standing with the Central Authority.

But then Sarah Palin said “death panels,” and a furor ensued. The provision on advance directives was quickly removed from the Obamacare legislation, as if Congress was admitting that Ms. Palin had been correct and they had been caught out.* Similarly, the effort last month to reinstate the provision failed to stick for fear of criticism at a bad time.

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*The original advance directive provision in Obamacare, of course, had nothing whatsoever to do with “death panels,” since there are no panels of any sort involved in establishing advance directives. Rather, the entities that some might call death panels, and which DrRich has chosen to call GOD panels (Government Operatives Deliberating) – that is, panels of distinguished experts that will determine, by means of “guidelines,” which patients will get what, when and how – remain fully operative within Obamacare.
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DrRich has nothing against advance directives, and indeed, thinks they are a good idea – in concept, at least. Advance directives allow patients to establish beforehand, usually by a written document, what kinds of medical treatment they would or would not want should they fall victim to a serious, life-threatening illness that leaves them unable to express their wishes. Advance directives are supposed to work by providing guidance to their physicians, who, in their fiduciary capacity, are charged with acting in the patient’s best interest.

A well-constructed advance directive allows patients to choose to spare themselves from demeaning, undignified, painful or otherwise undesirable medical procedures and treatments, should they become incapacitated at a later date. “Well-constructed” implies that the advance directives are clearly and concisely written, that they honor the ethical and legal norms approved by society, and that they provide the physician with clear guidance.

But it is more difficult to write a “well-constructed” advance directive than might at first meet the eye. The major problems are two-fold: Advance directives often express imperfect knowledge, and they are often imperfectly expressed. These limitations mean that in appropriately exercising an advance directive, often the physician cannot follow them to the letter, but must interpret them according to the circumstances at hand.

A healthy and relatively robust individual cannot always know how he or she will feel years into the future, when illness strikes and it is time to exercise an advance directive. Every doctor has seen critically ill patients who, despite having advance directives to the contrary, unhesitatingly choose to be attached to a ventilator when the time comes, for instance, rather than face certain imminent death. So experienced doctors know that advance directives do not always indicate what patients will actually choose to do when the time to make a choice is upon them.

They also know that, while conscious patients have the opportunity to repeal their advance directives, unconscious or incapacitated patients do not.** So, in exercising an advance directive, the conscientious physician interprets that directive in light of many other factors, such as, her personal knowledge of the patient, the opinions of family as to what the patient would want done, and the chances of a long-term recovery if the therapy being considered is used. Then she will negotiate with responsible family members an approach that appears to meet the patient’s presumed desires.

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**Conscious patients can repeal their advance directives in theory. DrRich has witnessed actual doctors, however, arguing vociferously against using a medical therapy that a sick patient now desperately wants, because years ago the patient signed an advance directive expressing aversion to that therapy.
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Therefore the advance directive in many cases is an important part of the decision-making process, but it is not the only part. The appropriate use of an advance directive requires the doctor to behave as a true patient advocate, to selflessly place the desires expressed in the directive in context with everything else that might affect the patient’s true and current wishes, and then make a recommendation that, to the best of his or her ability, honors those wishes.

Unfortunately, doctors can no longer act primarily as their individual patient’s advocate. Indeed, physicians are officially enjoined (by the New Ethics formally adopted by their own professional organizations) to give the needs of society at least equal consideration. And so, as has demonstrably happened with other “guidelines” in medicine, it is inevitable that advance directives will be reduced to a legal edict, which must be followed to the letter if the physician wishes to remain clear of the Department of Justice.

The likelihood that there will be no room for interpretation means that constructing just the right kind of advance directive for yourself – one that will be precisely suitable to any contingency that may occur – has become extremely difficult. If you get the details just a little bit wrong for the circumstances that actually arise, the price you pay may be very heavy. It would be better to have no advance directive at all than to have one that is misleading or ambiguous. Advance directives must be written with extreme care, and only after long, thoughtful consideration.

That is not how the government would have it, however. For many years now, the Feds, under the Patient Self-Determination Act, requires hospitals to inform patients about advance directives at the time of every hospital admission, and to invite them to sign one. To say this is a less than ideal time to implement an advance directive would be something of an understatement. Asking a patient to sign an advance directive at the time of hospital admission, often by including it in the pile of routine and mind-numbing legalistic documents which patients must sign if they want to receive medical care, and often with no more guidance than that provided by the admissions clerk (who might explain, “This tells the doctors you don’t want to be kept alive on a machine like a vegetable,”) tells us something about whether the true motive for advance directives is to protect the patient’s autonomy – or to reduce costs.

Having the discussion in a doctor’s office these days, sadly, might not be much better. The Central Authority knows that squeezing what really ought to be at least a 30-minute discussion into a 10-15 minute office visit already packed with Pay for Performance requirements (while providing the added threat of punishment if the physician fails to extract an advance directive from the patient), will yield, at best, a signature on a boiler-plate document.

But despite the slap-dash method by which such a document may be implemented, it is a document whose language – when the time comes – will be exercised with all the legalistic exactitude of a contract attorney by any doctor who knows what’s good for him.

DrRich thinks that Americans are right in being suspicious of the big push they are seeing to urge advance directives upon them. Invoking “death panels” in this regard is utterly inappropriate, but the end result will suffice. It is good that we have all been given pause.

Still, the concept of advance directives is a good one, and DrRich thinks most Americans might do well to have one. Despite the damage that is being done to them, DrRich thinks advance directives can be salvaged. To this end, DrRich suggests several steps we can all take in executing an advance directive that will actually do what we want it to do:

1) Don’t be pressured into implementing an advance directive by anybody whose career depends on keeping the Central Authority happy. Unfortunately, this likely includes your doctor if you are not paying your doctor yourself.

2) Don’t sign a boiler-plate document. These likely will have been drafted with the interests of the Central Authority in mind, with the help of very smart lawyers, and when these documents are called into use in all probability they will be interpreted for the convenience of the Central Authority.

3) Try to keep your advance directive from showing up in an electronic medical record. Write it yourself, and store it where your loved ones can find it when they need it. Give a copy to your spouse, your children, and perhaps (if you have a direct-pay doctor who works only for you) your physician. This way, since your advance directive will not be immediately available to hospital personnel if you are suddenly incapacitated, no unfortunate and irreversible decisions regarding the aggressiveness of your medical care can be made until your loved ones are notified.

4) Write your advance directive as a general guideline, with as few specifics regarding particular types of medical care as possible. You should assume that any type of treatment you mention in a negative light will be withheld under any and all circumstances, including circumstances you may not be aware of in which you would want that treatment.

5) You are not writing your advance directive for the doctors (it is most tragic that we can no longer trust doctors in this regard!); you are writing it to help your loved ones make the right decisions for you, perhaps despite the doctors. So your goal should be to clarify your general desires for your loved ones. Discuss your advance directive with your loved ones after you have written it, and ideally, before you have written it. Your written words will remind them of your wishes when the time is right.

Lest you think, Dear Reader, that  DrRich is merely being sarcastic  here (and why would anyone think so?), he is not. DrRich himself has an advanced directive that attempts to follow these rules. The document is stored at home with his important papers. Mrs. DrRich knows where to find it, and knows DrRich’s general feelings regarding these matters. With the guidance he has provided, DrRich trusts her and his children to make these important decisions for him. For anyone who is interested, DrRich’s advance directive is reproduced, in its entirety, at the end of this post. (The general language, which has been adapted and revised by DrRich for his own use, was originally suggested to him by a good friend who is a superb internal medicine practitioner.)

So. Advance directives are a very good idea, but unfortunately, have been identified by the Central Authority as a potentially powerful cost-cutting tool. Even before Obamacare, certain HMOs were refusing to reimburse hospitals or doctors that provided medical care that seemed to go against specific language contained in an advance directive. That, of course, was child’s play. Now that the Central Authority has gotten hold of them, advance directives will likely be treated the same way as other guidelines are now treated in medicine, that is, as edicts, and thus as vehicles for the criminal prosecution of medical personnel who deign to “interpret” them.

This means that if you wish to take advantage of the benefits which advance directives can provide, you will have to proceed very, very carefully.

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DrRich’s Advance Directive:

If I am able to communicate my wishes by any means whatsoever, then I wish to make my own decisions regarding my own healthcare. If, despite my ability to communicate, my condition makes it inconvenient to fully inform me of my situation and all my treatment options, then until such time as it becomes sufficiently convenient to do so, I want everything possible to be done to sustain my life and effect a recovery.

In the event of an incapacitating illness in which I cannot communicate, the basic guideline initially should be to do everything possible to sustain my life and effect a recovery.

After a reasonable period of time (in general, I would consider a week to be reasonable) if no progress has been made in the recovery of my mental function, and the likelihood of mental recovery is judged to be small, then withdrawal of life-sustaining care should be strongly considered. To help my wife and/or children with this decision, I would like to have an evaluation by a neurologist to help clarify the prognosis.

If improvement in my mental status has been made, then efforts to sustain my life and affect a recovery should be continued.

If at any point in my care there is a period of at least two weeks in which I am persistently unable to carry out meaningful communications sufficient to make my own wishes known (in the opinion of my family members and the neurologist), and the likelihood of mental recovery is judged to be small, then I would consider the withdrawal of life-sustaining care to be a blessing.

Podcast:

Patients, Doctors and Remote Third Parties [ 12:43 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (372)

From the ominously-titled book, “New Rules,” by Donald Berwick MD and Troyen Brennan MD:

“Today, this isolated relationship [between doctor and patient] is no longer tenable or possible. . . Traditional medical ethics, based on the doctor-patient dyad, must be reformulated to fit the new mold of the delivery of health care. . . The primary function of regulation in health care…is to constrain decentralized individualized decision making.”

Unfortunately, Dr. Berwick’s straightforward formulation of the appropriate role of the individual physician in our reformed healthcare system is not isolated to thinkers of the Progressive persuasion. The notion that most clinical decisions can be usefully made by a centralized authority is attractive even to some conservatives.

For example, a few years ago the noted economist Arnold Kling strongly defended the idea. “My own view is that a remote third party probably can use statistical evidence to make good recommendations for a course of treatment.”

Now, Kling is no far-left radical, pushing for centralized control of healthcare (and everything else). Indeed, he is now with the Cato Institute, and before that he taught economics at George Mason University. So he has earned his conservative and/or libertarian chops.

And to be fair, he is not really calling here for “remote third parties” to have final authority on what’s best for individual patients. Rather, he thinks patients should make that decision for themselves, weighing the recommendations of data-driven guidelines promulgated by remote experts, against the ego-toss’d recommendations from their all-too-fallible doctors, or, as Kling sarcastically refers to them, their “heroic personal saviors.” (Such sarcasm, regular readers will know, is as abhorrent to DrRich as it probably is to you.) Kling is saying: trust patients, armed with good evidence-based recommendations handed down from experts, to make the right decisions for themselves.

In concept even DrRich supports this latter notion. Indeed, a chief theme of this blog has been that doctors have been coerced into such a compromised position by the government and the insurance carriers that wise patients will no longer simply trust their doctors’ advice explicitly. As things now stand, patients who place full reliance on their doctors, assuming that they’ll get all the information they need to make good medical decisions, are putting themselves in peril. Smart patients will seek out all the information they can about their own medical conditions, so they can confirm that their doctors are indeed presenting them with all their reasonable options, and so they can more intelligently evaluate those options. And certainly, expert-endorsed guidelines would be an important part of that research.

But Kling’s remedy – that patients rely on the treatment recommendations made by expert panels as a remedy to the conflicted advice being doled out by their own doctors – is seriously flawed.

The first flaw, of course, is the idea that remote third parties, wielding evidence-based data, can make good treatment recommendations for individual patients. Evidence-based guidelines, almost by definition, are designed to improve the average outcome across a population of individuals, and are specifically designed not to optimize outcomes for each individual within that population.

Second, Kling apparently assumes that the remote third parties who are producing evidence-based treatment recommendations will be acting in a completely objective and unbiased manner. But this can never be the case. A major theme of the Covert Rationing Blog this past year has been to demonstrate that a) clinical science is probably the least exact of the sciences; b) the design and interpretation of clinical studies is inevitably attended by significant bias; and c) therefore, no matter who is producing them – whether it is medical professionals or GOD panelists (Government Operatives Deliberating) – these guidelines will always be produced with a particular agenda in mind. To assume that such agendas will be primarily – or even remotely – related to optimizing the outcomes of individual patients will often be a serious error.

Third, the idea that patients, even very intelligent patients armed with “perfect information,” can by themselves reliably sort through the morass of conflicting evidence and conflicting opinions that invariably inform any set of clinical recommendations (whether made by vaunted teams of completely objective experts from on-high, or by one’s inherently flawed, conflicted and ego-driven personal physician) is simply false. This would be the case even if the healthcare system were perfectly aligned to help patients. Which, of course, it is not. (It is aligned to affect the covert rationing of healthcare.)

Finally, while the advice patients get from their doctors is indeed biased, more and more it is biased (thanks to heavy-handed coercion) in favor of those same central authorities that are commissioning the expert panels.

As a result, patients – especially when they are sick and least able to fend for themselves – are generally incapable of negotiating the gratuitous complexities and hidden hazards laid out before them by a hostile healthcare system, a system which silently prays they will, in frustration, just go buy themselves some alternative medicine remedy, then crawl under a bush and die while contemplating their qi. Indeed, patients are as incapable of successfully navigating such a system as are accused felons of navigating a complex and hostile legal system that’s bent on sending them away for 15-20 years.

It is for this very reason that accused felons are assigned an advocate, an individual who is ethically and legally obligated to take their part, to help them navigate all the legal hazards, to do everything possible to see they are treated fairly, and that they are given every reasonable chance to prove their innocence. Lawyers, as much as we physicians might like to castigate them, are absolutely critical to a civil society.

And this is the reason why patients (according to traditional, though now quaint, medical ethics) are also supposed to have a personal advocate, an individual who is obligated to take their part, to help them navigate all the medical hazards, to do everything possible to see that they are treated fairly and that all available medical options are made open to them, and that they are given every reasonable chance of a good clinical outcome. Patients, in other words, need doctors who are devoted to the classic precepts of their profession. Such doctors, as much as Kling and others might like to diminish their importance, are also absolutely critical to a civil society.

But, as we have seen, and as has been publicly celebrated by Dr. Berwick and others, severing the classic doctor-patient relationship has been Job One under our system of covert rationing – whether that rationing is managed by insurance companies or by the government. Doctors simply cannot be allowed any longer to place their patients first. They’ve got to place the needs of their true masters first. They’ve got to keep the government and the insurers happy or they’re out of a job. They are no longer permitted to tailor clinical choices to best fit their individual patients, but they are simply to apply treatment directives as they are handed down by (from now on, government-appointed) panels of experts.

And this brings us back to Kling. DrRich of course agrees with his notion that patients ought to be armed with the high-quality information they need to determine their own medical destiny. DrRich can even agree that relying solely on the information provided by today’s doctor is generally not advisable. But DrRich cannot agree with the reason it’s not advisable. Doctors aren’t so much inherently flawed by ego and other intrinsic character flaws (at least, no more than any other group of humans), as they are operating under duress, under imposed constraints, and under external coercions that systematically and purposefully prevent them from discharging their professional obligations.

Nor can DrRich agree with Kling’s proposed solution. No centralized set of recommendations, evidence-based or not, can fix this problem for patients – especially when the expert bodies that make those recommendations are controlled by the same entities that have, with malice aforethought, killed the medical profession for the express purpose of stripping patients of their advocates, and therefore, of their medical options.

DrRich has trouble seeing a solution to this problem that is not radical. He does not see how doctors can resume their rightful place as their patients’ advocates and remain in what has become of the traditional healthcare system. Perhaps enough doctors to make a difference will leave the traditional healthcare system, shedding themselves of the third parties who now control their behavior, and re-establishing their practices (and revitalizing their profession) with a new commitment to the doctor-patient relationship. If not, then perhaps some brand new profession will establish itself (call it “personal healthcare advocates”) to fill the great void that threatens the safety of every American patient.

So yes, let individual patients weigh all the evidence and choose the healthcare option that suits them best. But unless they have a personal advocate to help them navigate the morass of biased choices – whether that advocate is their PCP like it’s supposed to be, or some new variety of professional advocate – those options will be limited to whatever healthcare is deemed best by the central planners.

A fine economist such as Dr. Kling should realize that a remote third party can no more make good recommendations for individual patients trying to survive in the rough and tumble of the healthcare system, than can a remote third party make good recommendations for individual businesses trying to compete in the rough and tumble of the marketplace. It is one thing for Progressives to hold to such a notion. It is far more disturbing to see respected conservative thinkers doing so.

In early 2010, The Covert Rationing Blog and the ACP Advocate Blog were named finalists in the 2009 Medical Weblog Award Competition, in the category of Best Health Policy/Ethics Blog. DrRich, who has been a vocal critic of the “New Ethics” espoused by the ACP (and other professional organizations), took the opportunity to challenge the ACP to a public debate on medical ethics.

The ACP initially accepted the challenge, but quickly withdrew from the field. Nonetheless, several entertaining posts resulted. If nothing else, the following posts clearly outline the glaring deficiencies of the medical professions’ “New Ethics.”

Part 1 – DrRich Issues A Challenge To the ACP: Since the Weblog Awards have seen fit to throw us together in a formal “contest” about medical ethics, let’s take this opportunity (for the sake of the voters) to debate the following proposition: The New Ethics promoted by the ACP is harmful to patients, and destroys the ethical underpinning of the medical profession.

Part 2 – DrRich Renews the Challenge: While the ACP cogitated on whether their new Weblog Awards finalist status obligated them,  the mighty ACP, to respond to DrRich (best known as some guy in the blogosphere), DrRich revealed for them the Right Way to think about medical ethics.

Part 3 – The ACP Issues a Formal Response, and DrRich Rebuts: The Chair of the ACP Ethics, Professionalism and Human Rights Committee responds, and informs DrRich that he makes much ado about nothing. DrRich offers a devastating rebuttal that, in the end, proves to be dispositive.

Part 4 – Further Goading By DrRich: Attempting to entice the ACP to respond to his rebuttal, DrRich becomes just a touch less polite, by offering a commentary on the ACP’s astounding exhortation that physicians practice “parsimonious care.”

Part 5 – Advice to Primary Care Physicians Who Labor Under the “New Ethics:” Having demonstrated the fundamental bankruptcy of the New Ethics, and the inability (or unwillingness) of their professional organization to respond to a reasoned challenge, DrRich offers some advice to the very physicians who are expected to work under these untenable ethical precepts.

Part 6 – Taking the Loss Philosophically: While considering himself to have won the Great Medical Ethics Smack Down (by default, if nothing else), DrRich graciously congratulates the ACP for their astounding, stroke-of-midnight victory in the Weblog Awards.

Podcast:

And Here's Something Else For You PCPs To Do [ 12:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (383)

Thanks to Ms. Wood of the Occam Practice Management Blog for calling DrRich’s attention to an interesting article appearing recently in the Wall Street Journal Health Blog. This article describes the efforts of a non-profit organization called the Investor Protection Trust to (it appears) medicalize the problem of financial scams involving the elderly.

Specifically, under the auspices of the IPT, government securities regulators will be teaming up with physicians organizations (in particular, the American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Family Physicians), to train PCPs to recognize signs that their elderly patients are victims of financial fraud or exploitation. If such fraud is uncovered or suspected, the physician is to notify Adult Protective Services, an organization which (helpfully) is not subject to certain annoying confidentiality regulations. IPT estimates that screening for financial abuse can be accomplished by adequately-trained PCPs in only three short minutes.

The plan is to have PCPs take special training to help them recognize the signs of financial elder abuse. This training can be accomplished in only two hours, the IPT explains, and will be conducted “under the auspices of medical ethics continuing education.”

Long-time readers will know that DrRich is the President (and sole member) of Future Old Farts of America. (He retains this position despite the fact that his eligibility for FOFA is rapidly expiring, and, some have suggested, has already expired.) As President of FOFA, DrRich naturally deplores financial fraud perpetrated upon the elderly. Indeed, this is one of the chief reasons he opposes Obamacare.

So DrRich applauds this new effort to protect the fiscal wholeness of our beloved elderly. The plan is flawless, as it has something good in it for everyone – except, perhaps, the PCPs.

The IPT itself stands to gain much from this new program, since this organization is funded through fines collected from investment-fraud cases. Having American PCPs embark on a major, sustained, grass-roots effort to troll for such investment fraud (using screening criteria developed by the IPT itself) should greatly increase this organization’s revenue.

The major physicians organizations which represent PCPs – the ACP and the AAFP – also come out ahead by supporting this effort. They reap, of course, all the public relations benefits that always go along with new programs aimed at assisting our esteemed elderly population. But perhaps more importantly, their participation in this program helps them with the small “ethics problem” they have lately created for themselves.

As regular readers will know, the ACP and AAFP are major proponents – and indeed the authors – of the New Age medical ethics that was formally adopted by the medical profession in 2002. This new ethics, as DrRich has patiently explained, obligates physicians to strive to practice medicine for the benefit of the collective. Practically speaking, the “new ethics” creates the ethical foundation by which American physicians will practice medicine according to fiats handed down by government-controlled expert panels. That is, it excuses physicians from their now-obsolete obligation to always do what’s best for the individual patient, in favor of doing what’s best for society as a whole, as determined at a distance by the Central Authority.

All well and good. As DrRich has amply demonstrated, the ACP (at least) is quite satisfied with its new medical ethics, and sees no reason to reconsider. But still, this creates a problem for the ACP when it comes to “medical ethics continuing education.” Thoughtful physicians, when faced with indoctrination programs aimed at getting them to absorb the new medical ethics, often raise uncomfortable questions, questions which (as, again, DrRich has shown) even the chairperson of the ACPs’s ethics committee cannot effectively answer. Clearly then, having formally tossed real medical ethics aside has undoubtedly made these ethics sessions somewhat awkward for the instructors.

What better solution to this embarrassing problem than distraction? Simply turn these annoying continuing education sessions into something other than a discussion of medical ethics.  Turn it into, say, a two-hour session on recognizing financial fraud among the elderly. You’ve got to have something to talk about, after all – and defrauding the elderly is unethical, is it not?  It is not hard to understand why physicians organizations are so supportive of the IPT’s new effort.

But, of course, the very first among the beneficiaries of the medicalization of elder fraud is the government.

Most directly, anything that helps to keep the estates of the (pleasantly) befuddled elderly intact, until they pass on to their more permanent rewards, will increase revenues to the state and federal governments through inheritance taxes.*

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*DrRich leaves it to the reader to decide whether the benefits to the overall economy are greater if the accumulated wealth of the elderly is passed on to the government, or to perpetrators of fraud. Which entity – government or crooks – is more likely to make use of that money in a truly stimulatory fashion? It boils down to the old argument between Keynes and Hayak, of course. In the interest of both brevity and civility, DrRich declines to take up this argument at the present moment. Still and all, it is indeed a point for consideration.
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But the government – and any healthcare payer – benefits immediately from this new program, even before the elderly person dies.

A major strategy in cutting the cost of healthcare – THE major strategy – must always be directed toward controlling the behavior of PCPs. This strategy, for instance, fully explains the massive tangle of uninterpretable rules and regulations which the PCP must painstakingly navigate today, the violation of any one of which is now a federal crime punishable by massive fines and imprisonment. Another tactic for controlling the PCP’s behavior is to severely constrain their face-time with patients, and to tightly regulate what must occur during these now-brief doctor-patient encounters.

Accordingly, during the 7.5 minutes allotted for each patient visit, the PCP must complete a 10-to-15-point checklist of required activities that fall under the rubric of “Pay for Performance.” Such checklists are designed, among other things, to keep the PCP and patient from straying off to address medical questions which do not appear on approved lists, and which might lead to unfortunate medical expenditures.

From the government’s standpoint, adding yet another obligation to the PCP’s critical checklist – an obligation which is so obviously beneficial to our elderly citizens, and which after all takes only three minutes to complete (leaving a full 4.5 minutes for actual medical issues) – is a very useful thing. And furthermore, it is the right thing. Anyone objecting to PCPs being directed to screen for financial abuse in their elderly patients immediately reveals themselves to be completely heartless and unfeeling and, likely, a Republican.

The PCPs, of course, are the only losers here. They are being asked to add yet another impossible task to their already-impossible list of jobs. Furthermore, as we have seen, once some outside body declares that it is the PCPs job to accomplish some impossible new task (such as assuring that all of their patients actually quit smoking), then our friends in the legal profession can immediately begin suing PCPs who fail to accomplish it.

So now the adult children of neglected elderly parents, finding that their inheritance has been frittered away because someone talked Pap-Pap into having a new roof installed on his house every year, will have somewhere to go to recover their damages.

If, as has been DrRich’s contention, the ultimate goal is to render primary care medicine so very odious, demeaning, exasperating and dangerous as to become a completely untenable proposition for any self-respecting American physician, so that by default the role of PCP will have to be filled with lower-level professionals who presumably will be more accepting of central directives, happier with checklists, and more comfortable with time-clocks than most doctors ever could be, then this new initiative is more than just a good idea. It is truly inspired.

Podcast:

Medical Ethics and the Amish Bus Driver Rule [ 18:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3960)

Rachel Maddow, in a discussion related to the provision of abortion services, once proposed that we (society) should invoke the Amish Bus Driver Rule whenever medical professionals invoke their personal convictions in refusing to provide legal medical services.

The Amish Bus Driver Rule goes like this: If you’re Amish, and therefore have religious convictions against internal combustion engines, then you have disqualified yourself for employment as a bus driver. (Presumably Ms. Maddow would not apply the Amish Bus Driver Rule to everyone, since it would disqualify, for instance, Al Gore from utilizing horseless carriages and other fossil-fueled contrivances.)

The Amish Bus Driver Rule would do far more than merely render it OK for doctors to perform abortions and other ethically controversial (but legal) medical services. The ABDR would obligate physicians to provide such services, whatever their personal moral or religious convictions.

The reason DrRich brings this up is not because he considers Rachel Maddow to be the giver of rules for the left, or for the government, or even for MSNBC. Rather, he brings it up because the Amish Bus Driver Rule is entirely compatible with Progressive medical ethics, and therefore it has a pretty good chance, sooner or later, of becoming the official policy of our new healthcare system.

To spell it out: Once you agree to accept from the government a license to practice medicine, and thus accept a privileged and restricted position within our society, then you are naturally obligated to provide any medical services, approved by the government, that you are called upon to provide. In particular, you are obligated to check your personal  – and most especially, your religious – convictions at the door. If you are unwilling to carry out this obligation, then, like the Amish bus driver, you have disqualified yourself from that privileged position. Go do some other job that does not violate your prissy sensibilities.

This logic is eminently simple. In fact, it can be reduced to an elementary syllogism:

Premise 1: Society awards physicians an exclusive license to provide legitimate medical services.

Premise 2: Society deems certain medical services such as abortion, assisted suicide or euthanasia to be legitimate medical services.

Conclusion: Therefore, all licensed physicians are obligated to provide these services.

Many conservatives will be nearly apoplectic over the idea that doctors who are morally opposed to life-ending medical activities must either agree to perform those activities (once society decides they are legitimate medical services) or leave the profession. But conservatives, proud of their self-described tradition of acting on the basis of hard data and cold logic (unlike those silly liberals who let simple emotions rule them), find themselves in this instance stymied by the very foundation of logic – the syllogism. They are hoisted on their own petard.

Indeed, doctors who object to having to provide life-ending medical services find themselves in quite a fix, and what’s more, it is a fix that has resulted from the actions of their own profession.

When we are faced with a syllogism whose internal logic is unassailable, but whose conclusion we strongly believe to be wrong, then Aristotle (him again!) teaches us to check our premises. But when we do so, in this case we quickly see that while both premises may “feel” wrong to many physicians, in 2010 they are indeed correct. And therefore, so is the conclusion.

Premise 1 asserts that the physicians’ primary obligations are defined by a contract between themselves and society – or (let’s be frank) the state.

Until just a few years ago doctors could have legitimately objected to this assertion, since from the time of the ancient Greeks the physician’s prime obligation was defined by a direct covenant between themselves and the individual patient. And the precepts of medical ethics that governed the behavior of physicians were focused entirely on sanctifying that doctor-patient relationship. Those ethical precepts took precedence over everything else, like ethical precepts are meant to do, and at least in principle superseded all other authority down through the ages.

But alas, modern doctors don’t hold to such things anymore. And in recent years they have made their departure from their ancient ethical principles, and from the traditional doctor-patient relationship, fully explicit and quite formal.  They have done this to such an extent that they can no longer even aspire to the relatively minor sin of hypocrisy.  (Say what you will about hypocrites. At least they espouse firm principles which they can then violate.)

It is clear, of course, that doctors do not work for their patients anymore. Instead, they now work for the government and the government-regulated insurance companies. Still, this new kind of working relationship does not necessarily have to wreck medical ethics or the doctor-patient relationship, were it managed thoughtfully. But rather than figure out how to preserve their professional obligations within a new economic paradigm, the medical profession instead has chosen to issue a revised set of ethical precepts “for a new millennium,” aimed at adjusting what were supposed to have been (and had been, for the prior two millennia) timeless principles, in order to comport with the changing needs of society.  And so, of its own accord, the medical profession has abandoned its foundational ethical precepts, and thereby has abandoned the classic doctor-patient relationship – the very thing which defined the practice of medicine to be a professional endeavor in the first place. The medical profession has redefined itself by a new obligation to the changeable needs of the collective, instead of its old obligation to the expectations of the individual patients who place their lives in their hands.

In short, the profession of medicine has formally and voluntarily converted itself into a primarily contractual enterprise (i.e., as contractors for the government and government proxies), instead of a primarily ethical enterprise between themselves and their patients.

And so, whereas Premise 1 could have been easily cast aside just a few years ago (which is why it still “feels” wrong to a lot of doctors), today it is entirely legitimate.

Premise 2 recognizes certain life-ending activities to be legitimate medical services. Abortion, of course, has been legal in the U.S. for several decades. Since many of his readers will quibble with the assertion that abortion is life-ending, DrRich has decided to make Premise 2 somewhat forward looking, and so he has included the other two life-ending actions which will very likely become legitimate, approved “medical services” in the foreseeable future.

The medical profession not too many decades ago was quite clear on the ethical status of life-ending actions taken by physicians. Such actions in all their forms were proscribed. The Hippocratic Oath forbids taking actions intended to end life, and specifically calls out abortion as one of those  forbidden actions. But the Hippocratic Oath (like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) has become merely quaint in our modern, advanced society.

One of the reasons DrRich appreciated the Hippocratic Oath, when it was recited at his medical school graduation way back in a different era, was that it so clearly reflected non-religious standards. Yes, it blustered on about Asclepius and Hygieia and so on, but even the ancient Greeks didn’t really take their gods seriously. The Oath invoked the gods in the same manner in which, some assert, our founders invoked the Creator in the Declaration of Independence. Whether or not they were actually asserting that our foundational principles come directly from a being named God, they were making a very powerful statement. At the very least, they were saying, “We hold these principles to be so fundamental to the essence of man that to violate them would violate our very reason to exist. They are our bedrock, and to challenge them would be fatal to our enterprise. Here we draw our line in the sand, and we will defend this line to our deaths.”

The Hippocratic Oath was kind of like that.

The Hippocratic invocation against physicians ending innocent life was a clear line in the sand, and its purpose was a practical one rather than a religious one. For, in order to legally take an innocent life, we are required to say either that sometimes it is perfectly OK to kill an innocent human being, or that for some reason (because, for instance, at such-and-such a stage of fetal development the potential human is not yet viable) a particular innocent life is not really a human being after all. If it is sometimes perfectly OK to kill an innocent human being, our society is terminally corrupt. On the other hand, if society has the temerity to define “human being” in such a way as to meet its exigencies of the moment (beyond the most conservative possible definition suggested by nature, that is, the point where sperm and the egg combine to form a new life entity), it will necessarily be a fundamentally arbitrary definition. And once society undertakes to define human life arbitrarily, then there is nothing to stop society from changing that arbitrary definition as expediency requires.

Wise Hippocrates (DrRich suspects), foreseeing that mankind was likely to continue with its periodic spurts of genocidal indignation against this or that sub-human subset of our species, and seeing that it would be fatal to the medical profession to allow its special arts to be turned toward aiding such efforts, and realizing that it would be impossible, once physicians engaged in any small but legitimized taking of innocent life, to keep from escalating those activities if the needs of a society under duress demanded it, came to the conclusion that the profession required an absolute proscription here. This proscription was not a religious statement, but a practical and entirely secular one, based on a long and thoughtful observation of human nature, and aimed at keeping the medical profession focused on its real mission (caring for individual patients) rather than becoming an instrument of societal or political imperatives. And for over two thousand years the medical profession followed this line of reasoning.

The Hippocratic Oath has not been read aloud during medical school graduation ceremonies for decades now. The reason it was dropped has nothing to do with the usual claptrap you hear about not wanting to swear to Greek gods anymore. It has to do with the fact that doctors no longer subscribe to the content. It is no coincidence that the oath disappeared from the program in very short order during the 1970s, right after the Rowe v. Wade decision.  In any case, over the past few decades many physicians – possibly a majority – have quite gotten over their queasiness about taking actions that either a) end innocent life, or b) admit that society has the right to define arbitrarily what it means by “human life.” And the ones who still object to such actions are in dire risk of becoming the Amish bus drivers of healthcare.

So Premise 2 clearly expresses the actual default position of the medical profession today. While, for many physicians, it (like Premise 1) “feels” wrong, Premise 2 stands on its own merits.

Thus, like it or not, almost entirely due to the “evolution” of the profession of medicine itself rather than to any externally imposed changes, our syllogism appears entirely correct.

The implications are quite disturbing, and go far beyond the mere prospect of forcing pro-life doctors to either get with the program or get out. For what this syllogism really says is that the state will determine which medical actions are legitimate (or to be more specific, ethical), and that physicians being (through their own voluntary capitulation) mere contractors working at the pleasure of the state, are thus obligated to just shut up and sing. To say it more plainly, what is medically ethical is to be determined by the state, and individual doctors (except for the ones acting as collaborators and spokespersons for the state, whose job will be to make the ethical pronouncements seem medically legitimate), will have nothing to say about it.

When we view the history of mankind, we see that when the sovereign state is the entity which determines what is ethical, there is always hell to pay.

History teaches us that the state is sovereign not because it is inherently the most ethical entity within a social construct, or an ethical entity in any sense at all.  Sovereignty is determined by power, not ethics. Indeed, the most useful definition of “sovereign power” is: that power which has the ultimate ability to impose its will by the application of violence. The state is inherently a political and power-based entity, whose survival depends on manipulating the political landscape and the ability to threaten (or exert) adequate violence whenever required. Such a beast is inherently poor at ethics.

DrRich happens to believe that American society is essentially good, and constitutes the most ethical large and sustained social system that has yet been devised by mankind. Yet when pressed by economics, war, political strife, manifest destiny or a myriad of other stresses, even our government has behaved dismally and frankly unethically, and has done so on numerous occasions throughout its history. One merely needs to consider slavery, the Dred Scott decision, the Mexican-American war, the treatment of native Americans, World War II internment camps, and the Tuskegee study (DrRich ignores more recent history here to avoid stirring up still-fresh controversies) to get a taste of what kinds of government behavior we in our culture are capable of justifying to ourselves when under duress. (To put this in perspective, of course, other highly-developed Western cultures during the past century, where powerful sovereign authorities assumed the right to define ethical actions, performed atrocities that cause ours to pale in comparison. But this mitigation merely reinforces DrRich’s main point.)

As DrRich has been fond of pointing out on this blog, the need to find ways to ration American healthcare covertly has created extreme duress within our healthcare system, and within the government and the insurance companies responsible for administering it. And as a result covert rationing has already produced deeply and widely distributed behaviors that are harmful, inefficient, unfair and yes, frankly unethical, which affect every aspect of American healthcare.  Ceding to the state – desperate to ration healthcare in any manner it can get away with – the right to define what is medically ethical, and assigning to doctors the obligation of simply obeying, sounds to DrRich like a prescription for catastrophe.

And in this way, Progressive medical ethics has brought us to a very dangerous juncture.

Podcast:

Progressive Medical Ethics [ 11:56 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (560)

Having advanced his theory of Progressivism, and having shown how his theory explains certain behaviors on the part of Progressives that otherwise might be difficult to explain, DrRich now proposes to examine the question of the medical ethics of Progressivism.

This ought to be an important question to doctors, patients, and anyone who thinks they might someday become a patient. For, however else one might want to define “ethics,” for practical purposes a system of ethics fundamentally determines how one ought to act when one must act in the face of competing interests. And the healthcare system being rife with competing interests, ethical guidance is critical as we determine who is to get what, when and how.

Because ethicists generally attempt to devise a solution which balances, to some degree, the various competing interests (which all tend to have at least some merit), the field of ethics has become very complex to the uninitiated. Indeed, the arguments ethicists use to justify their positions are frequently so difficult to follow that professional ethicists all too often have been reduced to a virtual priesthood, dispensing their lofty wisdom from on-high.

But since truly ethical behavior requires more than merely following handed-down marching orders, and indeed, requires a certain amount of clarity as regards ethical precepts, DrRich has always considered the arcane work-product being offered up by most modern ethicists to be, well, unethical.

And this is where Progressivism, for all its faults, provides a breath of fresh air. For the chief ethical precept of Progressivism is an item of exquisite clarity, a bright, shining beacon that cuts through all the fog and fuzziness, and points the way.

To review, Progressivism (in DrRich’s formulation, at least) is the idea that the driving imperative of mankind is to devise the perfect society, that, indeed, the desired “progress” in Progressivism is the steady advancement toward that perfect society. The Progressive program is the natural result of the belief, most famously espoused by Aristotle, that man is inherently a social animal, an animal that naturally forms into complex societies; that individual men and women do not have much intrinsic worth as stand-alone units, but only as components of their larger group.

Furthermore, the Progressive program is to be driven by an intellectual elite, who will determine what does and does not advance the perfect society. This requirement for an elite leadership also derives from Aristotle, who recognized that most individuals within a society are incapable of perceiving the greater good, and if left to their own devices would return mankind to the ranks of the apes.

The Progressive program of steadily advancing toward a perfect society is much more than merely a desirable goal, it is an imperative; it is intrinsic to humanity itself. All other programs (libertarianism, conservatism, religions which emphasize the importance of individual salvation, &c.) are not only counterproductive to man’s true imperative, but are heretical.

And so Progressive ethics, if nothing else, are crystal clear: Anything that advances the Progressive program is ethical; anything that hinders it is unethical.

This general statement of ethics immediately implies two corollaries that more directly define what “right behavior” will look like:

Corollary 1) What is best for the collective is best for the individual. That is, since individual humans only achieve their humanity as a part of the greater whole, it follows that the chief obligation of any individual within a society is to act for the good of the collective.

Corollary 2) Since what is best for the collective is determined by the intellectual elite, it is the obligation of all individuals in a society to follow that elite.

With this summary of Progressive ethics, let us now turn to the question of medical ethics.

Classical medical ethics, from the time of Hippocrates, required the physician to always use his/her special training and special capacity for autonomous action for the benefit of the individual patient, and to place the needs of the individual patient above their personal needs. This requirement is what defined medicine as a classical profession.*

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* While the term “profession” has become diluted to include streetwalkers and football players, classically “the professions” were limited to physicians, lawyers and clergy, precisely because of this definition.
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But classical medical ethics cannot be permitted under a Progressive program. Allowing (much less encouraging) physicians to act autonomously for the good of their individual patients will necessarily conflict with that which is best for the collective. This is true because if the needs of the individual were to prevail, then patients who are lucky, smart or rich, and who have doctors who are particularly clever or aggressive, will get more than their fair share of the healthcare resources, leaving the collective wanting.

Accordingly, after years and years of dogged work, the Progressive agenda has succeeded very recently in changing the formal definition of medical ethics. In early 2002, a “new charter” of medical ethics was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. This new charter has since been formally endorsed by every major medical professional organization in the world. It charges physicians with the ethical obligation of achieving a fair distribution of healthcare resources. Medical students worldwide are now being taught that their main ethical obligation is to work for distributive justice, their obligation to work for the optimal benefit of their individual patients is a secondary concern, because of Corollary 1.

DrRich has described elsewhere how this new medical ethics places patients in great jeopardy, and wrecks medicine as a true profession. But old farts like DrRich (who prefers to think of himself as a “classic” physician), who still care about such things, will be gone in a few decades and can be safely ignored.

(For those who are interested, DrRich had the opportunity earlier this year to engage representatives of the American College of Physicians – chief authors of the New Ethics – in a public debate over medical ethics in this very space. DrRich was, at the end of the day, brushed off by the ACP, but not before eliciting a response from the Chair of the ACP’s Committee on Ethics, Professionalism, and Human Rights. That response, in essence, was, “What is good for the collective is good for the individual, and any jack-dog knows this. Who the hell are you?” In other words she invoked Corollary 1. You can read all the details about the great Medical Ethics Smack Down in this series of articles.)

One might ask, what was the impetus for physicians to voluntarily change their time-honored ethical precepts?

They were coerced.

Significant coercion was being applied to doctors to place the interests of the third party payers – both insurance companies and the government – ahead of their duty to individual patients. The utter impotence of physicians in fighting off this coercion was the impetus for promulgating the new ethical precept (to society) in the first place. This fact was stated explicitly in a 1998 article by Hall and Berenson in the Annals of Internal Medicine (volume 128, p 395) which stated: “It is untenable for the medical profession to continue asserting an idealistic ethic that is contradicted so openly in clinical practice. . .,” and which called for a “new ethic” which was more consistent with how doctors were being forced to behave. Specifically, the proposed “new ethic” was a duty to the group.

This paper was an important impetus to formally changing professional ethics. When the new ethical standard istelf was finally published in 2002, its very first sentence began, “Physicians today are experiencing frustration as changes in the health care delivery systems in virtually all industrialized countries threaten the very nature and values of medical professionalism.”

In other words, physicians felt powerless to fight off the coercion – so in response they changed medical ethics to make it OK to cave in.

And to say it yet another way, physicians can now act under Corollary 2 with a clear conscience.

Accordingly, it is now become the physician’s ethical obligation – and not merely a legal or regulatory obligation – to follow to the letter the guidelines, processes, and procedures that are handed down to them from various government-established expert panels, when they are caring for their patients. Autonomous actions taken on behalf of individual patients is more than just discouraged, it is, simply, wrong.

Under our new program of medical ethics, then, doctors are absolved of much of the responsibility of clinical decision-making. As many of those decisions as possible – a continually increasing quantity of them as time goes by – will be determined centrally, at which point the doctor is ethically obligated to follow them.

DrRich continues to think this new program is harmful to patients and to the medical profession. He will bring up some specific issues in this regard in future posts.

This is a delicate topic, and even DrRich (who has displayed on these pages a willingness to risk alienating Progressives, Conservatives, President Obama’s minions, fat people, editors of prestigious medical journals, global warming enthusiasts, babies, bunnies, and even his beloved fellow cardiologists) is hesitant to bring it up.

But events force DrRich to throw caution to the wind, and issue a warning, and a plea, to those among the broad community of physicians for whom he has the most respect – the PCPs. The event to which DrRich refers, of course, is the recent, tragic gunning-down of a physician at Johns Hopkins University Hospital by a disgruntled patient (or rather, by the clearly disgruntled son of a possibly disgruntled patient).

This is DrRich’s warning: the recent shooting at Johns Hopkins may indicate that the long-predicted (predicted by DrRich, at least) bloodbath of American PCPs may now be at hand. And this is his plea (and here is where even the usually audacious DrRich must admit to a slight bit of trepidation): PCPs, for your own good, for the survival of primary care medicine, and therefore for the success of Obamacare, you must now prepare to defend yourselves.

Yes, dear readers, it is time for American PCPs to begin packing heat.

DrRich well understands that many of his readers at this moment doubtless think he has, at long last, lost it; that his finely-honed (and amply-demonstrated) abilities in logical discourse have finally taken their leave, that he has, sadly, gone ’round the bend. DrRich forgives you for this reaction.

After all, the doctor who was shot (whose identity has not been disclosed, but who is apparently expected to recover fully), works at Johns Hopkins, one of the premier medical institutions in the world. And therefore, while its leaders undoubtedly give the requisite lip service to the importance of primary care medicine, Johns Hopkins likely does not have very many actual PCPs frequenting its premises. So (DrRich’s clever readers correctly surmise), it seems very unlikely that the shooting victim was a PCP; and for him to find a lesson for PCPs in this unfortunate incident is obviously too ridiculous for words.

DrRich does not take such criticism personally. He realizes that those of you who doubt him in this case are not being mean-spirited, but merely misinformed. DrRich accepts the fact that most of you do not scour the relevant scientific literature with as much care as he does. And so, he does not expect you to be aware of the recent work of one David Fishbain, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Miami, who published a study in NewScientist Magazine which indicates that up to 1 in 20 patients would like to kill their primary care physicians.

Professor Fishbain learned this interesting tidbit in a survey he conducted among 800 patients undergoing physical rehabilitation or suffering significant pain.

Those PCPs who are reading this startling news, and who, by virtue of the fact that they are still working as PCPs, have have most likely honed their skills of denial to a high art form, are doubtless consoling themselves at this very moment with this observation: “Sure they want to kill me. But as they’re disabled, their chances of success seem low.”

So chew on this. In a control group of patients who were not suffering from pain or disability, Fishbain reported that “only” 1 in 50 admitted to having murderous tendencies toward their PCPs.

Any way you cut it, the math is not pretty: the typical PCP with a patient load of 3,000 souls can assume that at least 60 of these individuals (up to 150, if he/she treats a lot of patients with pain or disability) would not only like to see them dead, but would be pleased to be the instrument of their demise. Worse, even these statistics are surely unreasonably cheerful, as they rely on the likelihood that everyone who wants to see their doctor lying lifeless in a pool of blood are comfortable admitting this fact to medical researchers doing written surveys.

In any case, whatever the specialty might be of the physician who was shot at Johns Hopkins, it is the PCPs who are at the highest risk. And now that the shooting has actually begun, DrRich does not think PCPs should take much comfort in the possiblity that the first casualty may not have been one of them.

Why are patients murderously angry with their PCPs? Let us count the ways.

DrRich has expended much space and effort on this blog describing how PCPs have been maneuvered into covertly rationing healthcare at the bedside. Patients who go to their guideline-compliant, non-fraudulent PCPs these days will find themselves limited to 7.5 to 12.5 minutes of actual face time, most of which their doctor will spend sitting at a keyboard, staring at an LCD screen, desperately attempting to make the appropriate clicks on the most favorable little boxes next to a government-sanctioned Pay For Performance checklist. There will be little or no time for whatever pressing issues may be on the patient’s own (non-government-approved) agenda.

The patient, who has waited weeks for this opportunity, will be asked to wait weeks more for another appointment to discuss those other things – or will be directed to an emergency room.

But the greatest sin of all is that, to assuage their guilt and to make such behaviors seem less than reprehensible, physicians have allowed their professional organizations to formally adopt a new code of medical ethics, one which charges physicians with the task of achieving a just distribution of healthcare resources – namely, with covert healthcare rationing at the bedside. This new ethical obligation officially drives a stake into the heart of the classic doctor-patient relationship, and is an abject admission that the practice of medicine no longer constitutes a real profession.

Patients may not know the niceties of this New Age medical ethics – they may not be able to articulate the reasons they feel abandoned in their hour of need – but they certainly perceive its effects on their lives. Their anger is not unjustified.

The fallout for the medical profession from all these developments has landed disproportionately on the PCP. For most patients, their PCP is the face of the medical profession, and it is in the PCP’s office where they most often experience the changes.

PCP’s, of course, are no happier with this new reality than are their patients. The loss of their professional integrity and their ability to act as autonomous advocates for their patients has (far more than the steady ratcheting down of their pay) made primary care medicine an exquisitely unattractive proposition, both to current practitioners and to potential future PCPs.

Unfortunately, any notion that this damage to primary care medicine can be readily reversed is sadly mistaken. It would be a great mistake, for instance, to place the blame for all this on Obamacare. While Obamacare will indeed utterly rely on PCPs to do the dirty work of covert rationing, the basis for such reliance was established long ago by the medical profession itself, which voluntarily adopted their New Age ethics several years before anyone had ever heard of Barack Obama or his healthcare reforms.

So it should be no wonder that patients are pissed. And since that which is pissing them off is not going away anytime soon, and indeed is about to become greatly accelerated, PCPs must be alert to the likelihood that the lethal ideations entertained by a small but not insignificant proportion of American patients may soon find an outlet beyond mere daydreaming. The Johns Hopkins shooting ought to be a wake-up call to all doctors – but especially to the American PCP.

And so, as a public service, DrRich reluctantly suggests that perhaps it is time for PCPs to prepare to defend themselves in one of the few ways they have left to do so.

PCPs may have lost everything else, but to this point, at least, they still have the second amendment to rely on.