Discrepancy between Medical Decisions for Individual Patients and for Groups

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Tension between health policy and medical practice exists in many situations. For example, regional variations in practice patterns persist despite extensive shared information,1 2 3 there are substantial deviations from accepted guidelines daily in the care of patients,4 5 6 7 and disproportionate amounts of care are given to selected individuals.8 9 10 These observations indicate that decisions in the clinical arena, which focus on the individual patient, may be at variance with general medical policies, which are based on wider considerations. Our study investigated this discrepancy.Imagine a patient presenting to a physician with a specific problem. Normally the physician treats each patient as a unique . . .

This publication has 19 references indexed in Scilit: