Healthy Skepticism Library item: 5373

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Relman AS.
The new medical-industrial complex.
N Engl J Med 1980 Oct 23; 303:(17):963-70

Abstract:

The most important health-care development of the day is the recent, relatively unheralded rise of a huge new industry that supplies health-care services for profit. Proprietary hospitals and nursing homes, diagnostic laboratories, home-care and emergency-room services, hemodialysis, and a wide variety of other services produced a gross income to this industry last year of about $35 billion to +40 billion. This new “medical-industrial complex” may be more efficient than its nonprofit competition, but it creates the problems of overuse and fragmentation of services, overemphasis on technology, and “cream-skimming,” and it may also exercise undue influence on national health policy. In this medical market, physicians must act as discerning purchasing agents for their patients and therefore should have no conflicting financial interests. Closer attention from the public and the profession, and careful study, are necessary to ensure that the “medical-industrial complex” puts the interest of the public before those of its stockholders.

Keywords:
Economics, Hospital* Ethics, Medical Health Policy Health Services Misuse Home Care Services/economics Hospitals, Proprietary/economics* Industry* Investments Laboratory Techniques and Procedures/economics Marketing of Health Services* Nursing Homes/economics Physician's Role Renal Dialysis/economics Social Responsibility United States