Over the past decade, prescribing information has grown more and more complex, more and more dense and more difficult to negotiate.
The doctors are always changing their opinions. They always have some new fad.
1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor
People and organizations other than doctors increasingly are assuming power to decide which medications to prescribe or procedures to undertake. More and more, decisions about personal healthcare are no longer made by the treating physicians in consultation with their patients, and based on the doctors' expertise.
There is one thing pleasantly unconfusing about medicine. The direction and the end are fixed and the patient never works backward.
The time may come when not offering this substantially more effective nutritional approach will be considered malpractice.
To make a coverage decision, doesn't one have to make a medical judgment?
Politicians should not get involved in the detail of clinical criteria and shouldn't be arguing with professors and consultants over whether there is one standard deviation or two standard deviations.
Doctors have an ethical duty to follow the practices and standards of care.
I think there is a sort of box-ticking mentality. Not just in the teaching profession. You hear about it in medicine and nursing. It's a lawyer-driven insistence on meeting prescribed standards rather than just being a good doctor.
Much of outcomes research is a systematic attempt to exploit what is known and make it better.
I was always taught at medical school that you should never do a test unless you could do something with the result.