The PMD Critical List: Should TV Doctors Be Regulated?

What responsibilities do TV doctors have to their viewers? A Columbia Medical School colleague of Mehmet Oz, better known as Dr Oz, answers that question in the top story in this week’s PMD Critical List. Also on the list: Can anesthesiologists be replaced by machines? Should they be?

• TV Doctors—Charisma and Responsibility (The Hill)

It’s past time for “MDs whose offices are in television studios” to better define their special obligations to fellow human beings. Are today’s TV doctors using their gravitas and charisma to inform the public responsibly or irresponsibly?

• Delivering True Quality Care: 7 Actions Doctors Can Take (Forbes)

A prominent physician-executive says a new IOM report offers “valuable and welcome” direction on “quality care.” Including greater emphasis on evidence-based care, access to care, unintended pregnancy, patient safety, preventive services, addictive behavior, and overweightness and obesity.

• Don’t Trust Doctor Google (Discover Magazine)

What layperson hasn’t gone online to try and diagnose him or herself? The real problem is “the people Googling their symptoms often have little or no medical knowledge.” And “as great as search engines are, they are not meant as a replacement for a medical professional.”

• Technology That Could Replace Anesthesiologists (The Washington Post)

A new machine is “targeting one of the best-paid medical specialties, making it all the more intriguing—or alarming, depending on your point of view.” Sedasys, a system that the Food and Drug Administration and anesthesiologists have fought, is finally getting its tryout.

• Decline in Medical Research Could Divide Physicians (Philly.com)

Here’s a Q&A with the dean of the Temple University School of Medicine who warns about the development of “a two-tiered system” that could harm medicine. Is “an elitism that has never existed in the American medical system” coming?

• ACP Backs Gay Marriage (Huffington Post)

The nation’s top organization of IM physicians has issued a new policy position paper supporting LGBT-inclusive policies—including civil marriage rights for same-sex couples, opposition to conversion therapy, and support for insurance for transgender healthcare. The move has prompted some criticism…

• Doctors Slam ACP for ‘Caving’ to LGBT Agenda (Breitbart.com)

Physicians from a pair of conservative medical groups are blasting the ACP for its new support of LGBT-inclusive policies. “It is shameful that the ACP, like the majority of other professional medical organizations, has chosen ideology over science,” says the American College of Pediatricians president.

• Family Doctors Who Do More, Save More (NPR.org)

A new study finds “that patients of physicians who provided a wider range of services experienced fewer hospitalizations and incurred lower health care costs.” Thus, the study found coordinated care led by a judicious family doctor leads to better patient outcomes.

• The Case for Black Doctors (The New York Times)

A thoughtful essay from a black psychiatrist about the need for more doctors of color. “We have to attack the problem of racial health disparities from as many angles as possible,” he writes. “Black doctors are an important part of this mission.”