title: Ethics in managed care and pain medicine.
abstract: The responsibility for ethical behavior in medical care has been described historically as evolving through 3 stages: personal responsibility, professional group responsibility, and organizational responsibility. Together these 3 forms provide a system of accountability that works better than any one form alone. Today we have added a fourth stage, societal responsibility, in which oversight of managed care practices is maintained by external review organizations. Managed care organizations and their medical directors can work with physicians, professional societies and oversight organizations to develop a working healthcare system that protects the ethical rights of individual patients and populations of patients.
authors.affiliation: LivovichJ@aetna.com
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Livovich