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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 ...

Wednesday, September 05, 2018

Does the notion that people have a duty to be healthy shatter traditional medical ethics

First lets define what we mean by traditional medical ethics.This would include the medical ethical precepts that constituted medical ethics before the announcement of the "New Professionalism" by the ACP and others. Basically and stating it informally it is that the physician has a fiduciary duty to the patients, and he should place the patients interests before his and of course first do no harm.

Keeping those precepts in mind, consider the following statement which is typical of a growing trend in medical commentaries .

People ( patients) have a duty to be healthy ( practice "healthy behaviors" and eschew "unhealthy behaviors") and comply with medical advice for the good of healthy population.

Drs. JF Wharam and D. Salmasy, writing in the Jan. 14,2009 issue of JAMA. In their discussion of P4P arrangements they state:

...policy makers, health care executives,disease advocates, and scientists with clinical or epidemiological expertise effectively choose population-level goals and thus impose obligations in a manner that
might ( my italics) infringe on patient and physician autonomy. Without fair deliberation,such goals, however wise, cannot claim legitimacy

I suggest that the word "might" be deleted from the above quote. It will infringe. Further, it is not clear what would constitute "fair" deliberation.When someone begins to talk about being fair,watch out.So with "fair deliberation " such claims ( if wise) are , according to the authors therefore  legitimate.



When physicians get some of their income by meeting certain population based goals( e.g. have x% of patients with a hemoglobin A1c under some number) patients who might seem to eat too much or not always take their medicine or whatever else might  be perceived  by the physicians as getting in the way of the population based goals and keeping  the doc from her bonus.Again it is issue of serving two masters,the real life patient in the exam room  versus some insurance based collective construct.

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