Reform must respect patient autonomy
Posted 8/5/2009
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As President Obama and Congress weigh changes in the nation's health care system they must avoid creating a system where physicians are financially motivated to pressure patients into mandated treatments that conflict with their values and needs, two Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center physicians warn.
Writing in the Aug. 6 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine, Pamela Hartzband, MD, and Jerome Groopman, MD, caution that health care reform carries with it the potential to create a clash between two recent trends in medicine - the humanism movement that focuses on individual values, goals and preferences - and the move toward evidence-based practice where data and guidelines standardize therapies and procedures.
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