Our entire health care system is organized largely to carry out decisions made by highly autonomous and independent physicians. Hospitals, for example, are organized to respond to physicians' decisions—even implementing them when the physicians are not physically present. Many aspects of our health care system rest on an assumption that the physician's primary concern is with the needs and ca…
The papers in this volume grew out of a series of informal discussions and activities going back to June 1981, when the Institute of Medicine brought together a diverse group of knowledgeable persons for a one-day workshop titled "Trends in For-Profit Health Care." The workshop was organized by Carleton Evans, M.D., then Director of the Division of Health Care Services at the Institute, and was…