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Is the new professionalism and ACP's new ethics really just about following guidelines?

The Charter ( Medical Professionalism in the New Millennium.A Physician's Charter) did not deal with just the important relationship of ...

Friday, August 24, 2007

UnitedHealth Group's "Medical Home" -Old wine new bottle?

DrRich in his latest commentary in The Covert Rationing Blog delves into the Medical Home as it is being put into motion by Unitedhealth Group. I am glad to see someone else expressing concern about this latest effort to control costs using a different rhetorical smokescreen. I had had my say about that here.

Dr. Rich says it well:

Whether you call it medical home, pay for performance, or just plain managed care, as long as the big insurers (and the feds) are the ones who determine the doctor’s viability as a practitioner, and as long as patients are the individuals who cause doctors to risk their viability as practitioners, the genuine practice of medicine - and the fabled doctor-patient relationship - must remain fond dreams.

I continue to be puzzled about the role of ACP in all of this.Is the leadership naive or is this nudge,nudge wink, wink or do they want to be the power position of making the rules that the rank and file physicians will play by? The family docs might be asking similar questions about their self appointed leaders. Is refusing to participate in all plans and Medicare the only way to maintain the doctor-patient relationship that some of us remember ?

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