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Corrected 6:50 pm – the Medical Professionalism Blog belongs to the ABIM Foundation, not to the Board.

ABIM is the American Board of Internal Medicine, one of the two U.S. organizations that certifies internal medicine physicians. Their The ABIM Foundation’s Medical Professionalism blog just posted a new item, ‘Extremist Proposal Shocks the Medical Establishment. Here’s the lead: (caps & !! added)

I suspect many were shocked, even disturbed, upon reading the article, “Professionalism, the Invisible Hand, and a Necessary Reconfiguration of Medical Education” by distinguished professor of medical education at Mayo Clinic, Fred Hafferty, and his two colleagues, Drs. Brennan and Pawlina. .. the authors call for all medical students to achieve competency in THE ECONOMICS OF CARE(!!) prior to seeing their first patients.(!!)

“There will be no traditional ‘patient care’ contact until students are fully able to decode and explain the highly cryptic billing statements that encumber patients. As students enter the bio-medical side of their training, patient meetings will begin to add explanations of diagnosis and treatment options to those of cost.”…

Bonus: the article they’re talking about is open access – free to all. Makes sense, eh? If we want patients / consumers to be engaged in healing healthcare, we/they need to be involved in the discussion, no?

Another takeaway: don’t fault clinicians for being uninformed about something, if nobody ever trained them to think that way. (Do you like it if somebody criticizes you for something you were never taught?)

 

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