The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics plans to publish a symposium issue in Winter 2014 exploring ethical, legal, and clinical issues triggered by the increasing commercialization of health care in the United States. The symposium will address a variety of dynamics present in this quintessentially American medical marketplace, with a particular focus on how commercialism impacts practitioners, patients, and policy makers at all levels.
Papers from any perspective or disciplinary background and concerning any aspect of the buying and selling of health care are welcome. We are primarily interested in papers between 15 and 30 double-spaced pages in length, although longer papers will receive careful consideration.
Please submit an abstract by November 1, 2013. Decisions on abstracts will be made quickly, and completed papers will be due by February 7, 2014. The JLME is the peer-reviewed journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics, and all submitted papers will undergo review by anonymous peers prior to final acceptance. JLME style guidelines are available at http://www.aslme.org/Submission_Guidelines.
Correspondence should be directed to the symposium co-chairs, Joshua E. Perry of Indiana Universitys Kelley School of Business at joshperr@indiana.edu (812-856-0120) or Larry R. Churchill of Vanderbilt Universitys Medical School at larry.churchill@vanderbilt.edu (615-936-3540).
Potential Topics Include:
- Is the practice of medicine a profession with business-like features, or a business with unique service components? Does the answer to this question matter for patients or practitioners? If health care in the United States is ultimately understood as a business, in what ways is this business enterprise similar to or divergent from other business practices and industries?
- Will the Affordable Care Act ultimately move health care delivery in the United States more in the direction of a market-driven, patient-as-consumer system, or in the direction of expanded government involvement, or in the direction of strengthening the professional service dimensions of health care?
- In the broader context of what Relman termed (in 1980!) the medical-industrial complex, do the life science, medical device, and pharmaceutical industries have any greater ethical responsibilities than do other (non-health care related) business enterprises? Do health care insurance companies? Do government bureaucracies?
- What ethical and legal issues are triggered by a physicians employment arrangement or ownership interest(s) in health care organizations or services to which patients are referred for treatment?
- What consequences flow from the increasing adoption by hospitals, hospices, and other health care providers of for-profit organizational structures and aggressive marketing strategies?
- What ethical and legal issues are raised by contemporary trends such as concierge medicine, physician entrepreneurialism, and medical tourism?
- How should health care providers resolve economic or business concerns, i.e., decisions about costs, payments, insurance reimbursement, hospital budgets, etc. that impact on the delivery of clinical care to patients? How should health care managers and executives resolve these conflicts?
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