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INNOVATIONS IN
MEDICAL PRACTICE
managers make these decisions without any formal clinical training patients is one area that the medical community ought to be able to
or a state medical license. It is these individuals who are strangers to unanimously support.
the doctor- patient relationship that have the final say in the type
and extent of care the patient receives. These are just a couple examples of diseases that affect the health-
care system but of course, there are many more worth treating. Ulti-
While benefit managers came into existence in an effort to control mately, the goal of this proposal is not to expand the vocabulary of
costs by reducing unnecessary medical procedures, their role in the public debate but rather to encourage the medical community
healthcare adds uncompensated administrative burdens on providers to leverage its training and professional judgment when engaging in
and delays needed care to patients. Benefit Managementosis is also a regulatory advocacy. As in medicine, we ought to strive for efficacious
spectrum disease that can proceed to malignancy where the delay at- and specific treatments that remedy only that which we wish to cure.
tributable to the authorization process or the complete refusal of au-
thorization causes added or prolonged pain and suffering. Tragically, 1 The current copy of the CDHS can be found on the Patient In-
Malignant Benefit Managementosis sometimes results in the death stitute’s website at: http://www.patientinstitute.org/healthcarepolicy/.
of a patient. Restoring physician autonomy in the treatment of their
visit us at www.bcms.org 23
