Medical Ethics Advisor – May 1, 2014

May 1, 2014

• Growing movement to measure quality of palliative and end-of-life care

  There is a growing focus on identifying a core set of quality metrics that can be used to improve both palliative and end-of-life care.

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• Patients and providers have misconceptions about end-of-life care

  Health care providers frequently have misconceptions about legal requirements of end-of-life care. By educating providers about how to make decisions when people lose capacity, fewer formal ethics or legal consults will be needed.

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• Ethical concerns of collecting data on physicians’ prescribing

  Data on physicians prescribing is routinely purchased from pharmacies, with physicians identified through information purchased from the American Medical Association.

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• "Stem cell" tourism continues despite efforts to curb unethical practices

  A growing number of clinics around the world are advertising therapeutic applications for stem cell treatments that have not been subjected to well-controlled trials.

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• IC is ethical issue with comparative effectiveness research

  Comparative effectiveness research (CER) has the potential to improve outcomes and lower costs, but one key ethical concern is how to best convey to patients that they are participating in research.

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• Research data not currently used to make coverage decisions

  The Affordable Care Act invested significantly in comparative effectiveness research (CER), but at the same time, states that no decisions coming out of CER should determine what treatments are covered by insurers, notes Norman Daniels, PhD, professor of ethics and population health at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, MA.

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• Right to privacy key concern with anonymous gamete donation

  While the vast majority of gamete donations are made anonymously, a growing number of countries are enacting laws allowing children access to identifying information about their gamete donor.

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