Patient empowerment in Europe: is no further research needed?

Defensive medicine in Europe: a ‘full circle’?

“…However, we can draw at least one sound lesson from the DM debate: an organizational culture aimed at limiting both extreme severity in punishing clinical errors and full discretion in medical practice should be highly recommended in health care systems [26]. While the former fosters DM, the latter has nowadays been overwhelmed by the 'patient empowerment' tendency [48], thanks to which redistribution of power from physicians toward patients has enhanced openness in the relationship. This implies that the legal framework of Northern European countries with their different solutions before legal action should be the best to deter DM.…”

“…To conclude, we offer a proposal to try to estimate DM and its costs in health systems through a potentially more robust tool than physician surveys. Assuming that physicians are the most informed patients when they (and/or close relatives) fall ill [48], why not set up a permanent European observatory to compare their healthcare patterns of consumption with the general population? To our knowledge, this useful exercise was done only once in the past in Switzerland in the early 1990s [53] and never repeated.…”

Conflict of interest disclosure: striking a balance?

“…the combination of public and private practice) [41]. Paraphrasing the title of a commentary [9], this seems to us a 'big elephant in the room to decloak' in the era of patient empowerment [42]. If patients' interests are the cornerstone of their fiduciary relationship with physicians [22], and business ethics must not be mixed with medical ethics [43], dual practice can definitely undermine patients' medical trust; therefore, it should be at least mentioned as a primary source of financial CoI in most countries.…”

What do economists have to do with health? Reflections from a person-centered approach

“…In economic theory, healthcare is regarded as an example of "market failure", given the absence of price competition, a circumstance that does not allow the basic conditions for demand and supply to be reached and justifies the consideration of health economics as an autonomous area of research [1].…”

“…However, the evidence regarding the model's impacts on patient experience, cultural differences and, at a macro level, the resources needed and the level of expenditure, remains mixed. 1 With reference to patient-centered care, a further step is taken with the person-centered care approach. Personcentered care, as an innovative approach to the planning, evaluation and delivery of healthcare in every environment/context, is grounded within a partnership between providers, patients and families, conferring mutual benefits, and based on the following principles.…”