Due to the fragmented nature of the U.S. healthcare system I do not
believe the government should be in a central position to issue physician
practice guidelines based on cost and efficiency. Physician practice
guidelines have shown the ability to improve patient health outcomes by
recommending evidence based treatment options. These evidence based
treatment options are often at a lower cost than alternative more
experimental treatment options. Another benefit of physician practice
guidelines is that they improve the consistency of the healthcare being
delivered to avoid issues such as health inequity.
With that being said, government issued physician practice guidelines
could simply end up being wrong. There could be oversights and it would
be incredibly difficult for the government to involve all of the proper
system matter experts needed to issue an overarching set of physician
practice guidelines. Also physician practice guidelines based on cost and
efficiency alone may lead to worse patient outcomes as necessary
treatments may not be recommended if the government deems them to be
high-cost or inefficient. The government issued physician practice
guidelines may also limit the research and development of new treatment
options that may cure chronic diseases. The government also has a variety
of agencies such as Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the
Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality, and the National Institutes of
Health just to name a few. With so many different government agencies
who would be responsible for maintaining and updating a government
issued set of physician practice guidelines?
I feel that the government would be in a great position to offer
recommendations for physician practice guidelines and to intervene if a
particular organization's physician practice guidelines are leading to
malpractice. What would be a better approach in my opinion would be to
allow the many different healthcare organizations and hospitals to create
their own physician practice guidelines acknowledging the government's
regulations. This would allow each healthcare center and hospital the
opportunity to find the most effective set of guidelines that leads to a
reduction in cost, and an increase in efficiency and quality care for their
specific patient population. Best practices will emerge which can be
implemented in the government's recommendations for physician practice
guidelines
References:
Lee, T. H., & Robert S. Kaplan and Michael E. Porter. (2015, September
14).The strategy that Will Fix Health Care. Harvard Business Review.
Retrieved fromhttps://hbr.org/2013/10/the-strategy-that-will-fix-health-
care
Shi, L. (2018). Essentials of the U.S. Health Care System (5th Edition).
Jones & Bartlett
Learning.https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9781284174144
Steven H. Woolf, M. D. (1990, September 1).Practice guidelines: A new
reality in medicine. Archives of Internal Medicine. Retrieved
fromhttps://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-
abstract/613805
Woolf, S. H., Grol, R., Hutchinson, A., Eccles, M., & Grimshaw, J.
(1999, February 20).Clinical guidelines: Potential
benefits, limitations, and harms of clinical guidelines. BMJ (Clinical
research ed.). Retrieved from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114973/
