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Over half (55%) of physicians told a patient that his or her prognosis was more positive than the medical facts warranted within the previous year, according to a survey conducted in 2009 of almost 2,000 physicians in seven specialties.
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One out of 10 physicians said they had told a patient something untrue in the previous year, according to a 2009 survey of 1,891 practicing physicians nationwide.1
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When physicians were first using the Internet to do e-prescribing back in the 1990s, this led to the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) forming a committee to define a physician-patient relationship, recalls Humayun J. Chaudhry, DO, MS, FACP, FACOI, the FSMB's president and CEO.
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Some commonly used diagnostic tests or treatments do not benefit patients, according to the ABIM Foundation's "Choosing Wisely" initiative. "This is not about 'rationing' care," says Christine K. Cassel, MD, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the ABIM Foundation.
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When a patient is communicating with a provider online, it is "quite easy for a physician to cross ethical boundaries that are inherent to the physician-patient relationship," says Toby Schonfeld, PhD, associate professor of medicine and director of the master of arts in bioethics program at the Center for Ethics at Emory University in Atlanta.
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Payments made to physicians by pharmaceutical companies may undermine the trust of patients and the general public in medicine and science, according to Henk ten Have, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Healthcare Ethics at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA.
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Physicians misrepresented their credentials online, violated patient confidentiality, had inappropriate communications with patients online, and used the Internet to prescribe medications to patients with whom they had no therapeutic relationship, according to a study of violations reported to state medical boards.1
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State regulators have determined that a California hospital owned by Prime Healthcare Services violated patient confidentiality by sharing a woman's medical files with journalists and sending an email about her treatment to 785 hospital workers.
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News: A 36-year-old woman was transported to the emergency department (ED) at 12:55 p.m. after exhibiting symptoms consistent with a viral infection. A lumbar puncture was performed, the results of which revealed herpes viral encephalitis. Acyclovir was ordered stat; however, the nurse on duty did not administer the medication until three hours later, by which time the patient had become comatose.
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Regulatory issues such as state-by-state licensing continue to be a serious hurdle in the expansion of telemedicine, according to a survey of clinicians using the technology.
