Healthcare Providers

I say, yes managed care has influenced the ways in which providers of healthcare make medical decisions. The purpose of managed care is to increase efficiency and decrease the cost of health care. In order to do this someone has to make a decision, whether it is to offer a wide array of choices of providers to the purchaser or limit the choices they have. Managed care has had a negative influence on the physician-patient relationship, the physician's ability to carry out their obligation of an ethical professional, and the quality of patient care.

When managed care has restrictions on the choices of physicians that a patients has, has control on patient's access to care, has treatment limitations that their physicians can prescribe, has limits on the ability of the doctors to refer patient's to specialists, and damages the trust of the patients in their doctors which is done by creating a persistent and corrosive conflict of interest, it will destroy the doctor-patient relationship in the long-run. The quality of health care has been influenced by managed care in such ways as diagnostics tests being limited, hospital stays being shorter periods of time, and specialist choices. The physician's ability to respect a patient's autonomy and confidentiality between patient and doctor has also decreased due to the influence of managed care.

Managed care programs can have success if the appropriate ethical standards are employed. One way they can do this is by providing systems that encourage effective relationships and long-standing relationships between the primary care providers and their patient's. Another way is for them to commit to providing their patients with quality medical care. One more way is to develop a population-based approach that will incorporate concerns of the public along with medical strategies for the individuals. While disapproving treatment methods that are inefficient they can still apply certain standards to treatments and diagnoses.

Managed care is usually delivered by managers who regulate it that have had no experience in providing care. One concern here is that care is provided at the lowest cost which makes managers more concerned with slowly eliminating the competition and not concerned in providing quality health care. The sicker patients are excluded in order to control costs. They also control costs by rationing inconvenience.