Physician practices are becoming more regulated, with more oversight and mandates. Some are justified, like vaccinations for children, others are not. Especially when they are unfunded.
Pediatrician Carole Allen argues that the worst than threaten patient care:
Mandates are not inherently bad. I make this distinction: Those that protect and enhance the public or individual health (vaccinations for school children, for example) are good; those that hinder the practice of medicine (excessive documentation to support an imaging test a physician believes is necessary) are not.Further, mandates that cause duplication of services, such as pediatric tests for scoliosis by both pediatricians and schools, may be inappropriate and wasteful.
Imposed care can also create disproportionate burdens on small or solo medical practices, particularly if such mandates are unfunded, putting added financial pressures on medical practices.
The two biggest upcoming regulatory events are forced coverage of the uninsured and Medicare denying payments for partially preventable hospital events.
The first will drive newly insured patients to the emergency department due to lack of physician access. The second will cause hospitals to ramp up unnecessary testing to ensure that any potential hospital complication was not pre-exisiting prior to admission.
In these cases the solution may be worse than the problem.
