Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

Abstract #151122

Carl W. Nelson, PhD, Northeastern University, 319 Hayden, 365 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115, 617-373-4751, ca.nelson@neu.edu

A growing reliance on allegedly impartial “evidenced based” approaches to medical and managerial decision-making has potentially serious ethical consequences capable of undermining stakeholder trust and compromising professional conduct. By its nature, dispassionate bottom-line reductionism cannot provide a holistic or normative view of the patient, the customer, the employee or any participating or affected moral agent. As medical school students dissect their cadavers or interact with patients few express more than a detached concern for the bodies on which they practice. As business school students “dissect” their cases or engage in field research far fewer contemplate anything more than the technocratic dimensions and financial ramifications of the problem. Effectively addressing real complexity in medicine or management can only come from appreciating that what is measurable or testable may be of least likely importance. These lessons are best learned through practice oriented education based upon a normative model of ethical learning that stresses value and meaning. Such a model for future physician executives is being implemented through a partnership between Tufts Medical School, Northeastern University, Brandeis University, and the Cambridge Health Alliance (a regional public health care institution) in the summer of 2007.

Learning Objectives: Participants in this session will

• Learn to recognize the rise in serious omissions of important provider and population based ethical considerations in the design and implementation of evidence based management pay-for-performance (P4P) systems. 2.Learn how one medical school delivers a practice oriented physician-executive program with a core emphasis on meaningful outcomes for patient populations while enhancing strategic institutional and societal values of importance to public health professionals.

Keywords: Evidence Based Practice, Ethics

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No
Any institutionally-contracted trials related to this submission?

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.