Revised Section 75 regs mire CCGs in a legal minefield

Further trouble not less after Government tables revised regulations on competition for providers. Who would be a Commissioner?

Ensuring Physicians’ Competence — Is Maintenance of Certification the Answer?

 “Pressed by their leaders, external stakeholders, and a public troubled by lapses in the quality of care and unsustainable cost increases, physicians are facing stiffer challenges in initiatives designed to link more closely the goals of learning with the delivery of better care and measures of greater accountability… ”

So begins Ensuring Physicians’ Competence — Is Maintenance of Certification the Answer? in this week’s issue of NEJM .

While the essay focuses on US system of reaccreditation, the opening remarks could apply to any (Western) healthcare system which desires its doctors to deliver best possible healthcare to citizens with greater accountability for the medical profession.

I want to know how my leaders allowed the demise of self-regulation to occur after several hundred years of autonomy.

Why does the author of the article believe there is no chance the medical profession can return to less fettered self-regulation?

Is it really in the public’s interest for politicians and healthcare payers to control medical profession ever more tightly? Is the cost for such regulation really affordable?

It is my opinion, that the majority of doctors are self-directed learners who perform better under less scrutiny rather than more. Healthcare innovation may well be stifled by the drive to tighten regulations for physician practice.

This is apparently a global phenomenon at least in the rich countries with managed healthcare systems. National medical bodies may need to work together to fight this threat to the effective care of our patients.

The increasing threats to independent practice and the profession of medicine are contrary to the human values in healthcare that is at the heart of what we do.