Word: patients
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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HHMI President Pursell W. Choppin said academic medical centers which perform patient care and basic medical research "are being squeezed by reductions in patient care revenues and restrictions on government research spending," according to the Boston Globe...
...enough, operating the detectors requires great skill because the instruments, sensitive enough to home in on a bomb, can be confused by the soup of a metropolis' naturally occurring radiation. Freshly paved roads, yellow rest-room tiles, the Vermont granite used in some of Washington's federal buildings, a patient walking out of a hospital after radiation therapy, even a bunch of bananas can set off the detectors. Finding a nuclear bomb in a city, according to a searcher, "is like looking for a needle in a haystack of needles...
...AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION is growing feverish about them. A number of physicians who have joined up have found them toxic to their employment prospects. And many patient-clients are questioning the candor of their medical guidance. They are for-profit health-management organizations (HMOs). The aggravating agent is a clause in many HMO contracts, variously described by critics as a "loyalty oath" and a "gag rule," that forbids doctors to reveal certain sorts of information, including treatment options, to anyone, including their patients. The A.M.A. House of Delegates has ruled that such restrictions "are not in the best interests...
...join the type of organization he had previously criticized? "If you want to treat patients these days," says Himmelstein, "you have to become a part of HMOs." Other physicians have felt these pressures and become similarly, if less vocally, disillusioned with HMO practices. One Los Angeles doctor worked dutifully for three years as a neurologist for CIGNA HealthCare, a large HMO. When she advised the mother of a brain-damaged boy that a muscle biopsy might help diagnose the extent of his condition, she was chided by her bosses for suggesting the test. "I was told it was a mistake...
...Healthcare's Simon argues that "there is nothing in our contract that should be construed as interfering with the physician-patient relationship. Doctors are encouraged to have open communications with their patients, about treatment, coverage, benefits, even the mechanism by which they are paid. It's just the specific dollar amounts that are to be withheld." But the contract terms cited by Himmelstein seem to prescribe a far greater circumspection from doctors than that...