Who Is the Most Important Stakeholder in Health Care?
Like many other doctors, patients, and President Obama, I’ve been thinking about Atul Gawande’s brilliant piece in the New Yorker on the root causes of spiraling health care costs in the U.S. One aspect that has not yet been given enough air-time is what role patients should play in this discussion. Gawande describes a thought experiment performed by him and a cardiac surgeon:
… READ MOREA cardiologist tells an elderly woman that she needs bypass surgery and has Dr. Dyke see her.