Shared planning: a new foundation for quality criteria.
The Chinese word for crisis has two characters. One for danger and one for opportunity. A crisis is a time for awakening to new perspectives and for asking different questions. The widely touted "liability crisis" in the health care field provides just such a time for new approaches. Perhaps there is a way to establish market mechanisms for decision making that gives expression to the desires and values of consumers while respecting the abilities and preferences of physicians. Quality might then be the result of natural selection or, more accurately, of market demand. Such a system would acknowledge that quality in medicine is not for defining. It's for having. Quality should be obtained in bargaining for services, not in mandates of professional regulation.
D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D008318:Malpractice; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010934:Planning Techniques; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D014481:United States