Effects of Managed Care on Physician-Patient Relationships, Quality of Care, and the Ethical Practice of Medicine

Abstract

MANAGED CARE has emerged as the dominant method of health care provision in the United States.¹ Managed care systems, in assuming responsibility for both the financing and provision of health care,² present new problems for health care practitioners. The primary care practitioner, in particular, has been put in the position of gatekeeper, whose responsibilities include cost containment as well as patient care.³ Some commentators^4-6 have suggested that the new organization of medicine threatens the role of physicians as professionals. Others⁷ have called for new models of the physician-patient relationship to accommodate the changes in health care financing.