A recent article in a a relatively obscure medical ethics journal dared to approach some important aspects of medical ethics that medical ethicists fear to discuss, but did not address the reasons for this fear or what to do about it. (Glenn JE. The eroding principle of justice in teaching medical ethics. HEC Forum 2012; 24: 293-305. Link
here.)
The Basic Ethics Case - A Prescription for the Patient's Spouse? Glenn began with a case typically discussed in medical school ethics courses:
a scenario where a standardized patient asks the student at the end of the examination if his prescription can be written in his spouse’s name as the spouse has health insurance which includes prescription drug coverage while the patient does not.
This
poses the question as to whether it is ethical for physicians to deceive third party payers to secure coverage for their patients.
The Politically Correct Way to Teach the Case Glenn stated that there is a politically correct way for faculty to teach this case:
Though we are never expressly instructed to tow [sic] a party line, there is a 'correct' answer to this ethical quandary as far as the institution we work for is concerned. Students who express a willingness to practice deception of third party payers for the good of their patients are to be commended for having their heart in the right place. However, we discuss many reasons why this action would not be a good solution to the problem. One of the issues is that to do so would be committing fraud.
Now, of course, writing a prescription for a patient who does not actually need the drug in question, understanding that the patient will give the drug to someone else who does not have insurance coverage to pay for it, is dishonest. However, the larger point that Glenn made is that it is not politically correct to allow discussion about why the patient made such a request in the first place, and that this ought to be troubling.
Note that Glenn did not explain how he inferred what the "correct" answer was, nor its actual source within the institution.
Over the first few years of having this conversation with young medical students, I have always come away feeling empty and flat. Framed as a session on the ethics of 'truth telling,' the conversation and the readings we provide to prepare for it works to obfuscate the much larger ethical issue impossible to tackle in an hour’s time. In essence, 'truth telling' is only a secondary ethical issue at play. The more important ethical issue is a question of social justice: what commitment do doctors have to poor patients and making sure that they get the health care services that they need?
Social Justice as Part of Professionalism, and its Avoidance The article by Glenn then emphasized that some of the original conceptions of physicians' professionalism included social justice. A definition promulgated by Herbert Swick in 2000 expressly included these relevant competencies. Physicians ought to:
- subordinate their own interests to the interests of others
- respond to social needs and work toward the benefit of the communities in which they live and serve
- adhere to the core humanistic values of honesty and integrity, compassion, altruism, empathy, respect for others, and trustworthiness.
Glenn noted that these three competencies, however, have been turned into a more narrow imperative, that
doctors should treat patients with an equally high quality irrespective of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion or cultural background according to what is best for them. In most codes of professionalism, however, class is not expressly implicated.
Note that Glenn did not question why the issues of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or cultural background became important in this context. He did further question why the issue of class did not. While
The professionalism code adopted by the American Board of Internal Medicine in 1999 was bolder and specifically states that doctors are to advocate for 'the best possible care [for their patients] regardless of the ability to pay'
Glenn asked
But where in the medical school curriculum do we teach medical students to be strong patient advocates and take on third party payers and hospital administrators? We now discuss the importance of prescribing generic drugs and we warn against the influence of big pharma, but when do we teach students to rebel against the high cost of medical education that drives students toward boutique medicine and fields of specialty care that offer the most money and most comfortable lifestyles?
Furthermore, he noted,
When it comes to justice in medical ethics instruction, the parameters of the discussion are usually constricted to focus on the conservation of health care resources and rationing care rather than providing more care to more patients.
So, now seemingly getting to the key question,
We have created an entire system where all the middlemen that stand between a patient and her health care are expecting to get rich. No oath or professionalism curriculum is structured to teach medical students how to ethically and morally navigate through that. How did the terms of the debate get so co-opted by the health care economists?
The Key Question also Avoided However, after this build up, Glenn then had trouble grappling with that question. He noted that the prices of various parts of US health care are rarely questioned, and wrote about some of the particular issues in pricing new technologies, including the costs of development of new drugs, the tax treatment of drug development, and whether the licenses drug companies obtain from universities to develop drugs are fairly priced. He also touched on the rising cost of medical school tuition and students' consequent assumption of large levels of debt. This was interesting, and provided some useful references, but never really directly addressed the key questions above: why was the discussion framed in terms only of current health economics, and more importantly, why did he and other ethicists feel they could not openly discuss any larger issues?
Only at the very end of the article did this appear
the structure of our current medical system has created a network of health care providers, researchers, purveyors and administrators who have strong financial incentives to work against the best interests of patients. This situation makes it difficult to talk with students about the ethical principle of justice in any meaningful way that is not hypocritical, leaving it seldom emphasized relative to the other three core principles of medical ethics.
Glenn did not further explain these "financial incentives," detail further who had them, explain how they "work against the best interests of patients," and most importantly, explain how these incentives make "it difficult to talk with students about the ethical principal of justice in any meaningful way that is not hypocritical." He concluded only
How can we cultivate within our students an understanding of the threats to medical professionalism posed by the conflicts of interest inherent in the various financial and organizational arrangements in the practice of medicine? We start by not shying away from the conversation.
SummarySo Professor Glenn argued that social justice has been considered part of health care ethics, and that ethicists should teach about it by questioning the current economic arrangements within the health care system. He then suggested that ethicists have been somehow pressured not do raise such questions, and that this pressure has something to do with
perverse incentives and
conflicts of interest prevalent within health care. However, he never actually addressed who pressured the ethicists, how the pressure was applied, and how that pressure was related to conflicts of interest.
Thus, it seems that authors in scholarly health care journals may now hint that there are certain things one must not discuss, that are taboo to discuss in health care, but cannot actually say what exactly is taboo, and why it became that way. Thus, the article by Glenn seems related to what we sometimes coyly call the "
anechoic effect," that the issues we discuss on
Health Care Renewal often do not seem to be considered topics of polite conversation. But in a strange recursive way, the article never could quite manage to discuss what it is it said others cannot discuss, which in a way just further validates the importance of the anechoic effect.
The Glenn article is reminiscent of another article we
posted about. That article, by Souba and colleagues, found that there are many "elephants," that is, unmentionable subjects, in academic medicine, However, that article also never clearly defined what these unmentionable subjects actually are, other than subjects that displease those in power. Thus this too reinforced just how taboo these topics are. Even those willing to admit that taboo topics exist are still unable to name them.
At least the Glenn article did suggest, however vaguely, a relationship between conflicts of interest and the anechoic effect. We have documented that
individual and
institutional conflicts of interest are rampant in health care, including, and probably particularly academic medicine. For example, pharmaceutical companies (and also all sorts of other health care corporations) may pay medical school faculty members and administrators (as consultants,
"key opinion leaders," speakers, advisers, even board members). The leaders of academic medicine seem particularly prone to such conflicts. For example, a majority of US medical school department chairs have significant financial relationships with health care corporations (see post
here). We have shown how top medical school leaders may simultaneously serve on the boards of directors of health care corporations (see post
here). Such health care corporations may now also support various aspects of medical academia (through research grants, "unrestricted" and other educational grants, other gifts to hospitals and universities, etc). Financial conflicts of interest may help to directly enrich many faculty and academic leaders, and indirectly enrich them by enriching their organizations. People who are personally profiting from relationships with health care corporations are unlikely to question such relationships. The leaders of organizations which depend on funding from such corporations are unlikely to question whether conflicts of interest might lead to corruption. People whose colleagues, friends, family members, or supervisors are personally benefiting from conflicts of interest may hesitate to challenge such relationships. Since these relationships permeate the economics of health care, is it any wonder that the entire topic has become taboo?
So the first step in challenging this taboo is to acknowledge it exists, and to not "shy away" from discussing it, as Glenn suggested. People are beginning to acknowledge there is an elephant in the room. Now we have to describe the elephant, discuss the elephant, and eventually figure out how to get the elephant out of the room.
Hat tip - to the
Medical Professionalism Blog.
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