Beware the undercover patient

When I was working as a consultant to the Medical Board of California, they frequently used “fake” patients (who were usually clinicians or investigators) to check out standard of care issues, prescribing issues, and fraud issues.

I heard this quote at an ACP conference (I think it was from Faith Fitzgerald from the University of California):

These actors teach us that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck it’s actually a parrot. Pretty soon no one will know how to diagnose a real patient.