|
KMID : 1025620160190030375
|
|
Korean Journal of Medical Ethics
2016 Volume.19 No. 3 p.375 ~ p.389
|
|
|
What Factors Promote Overtreatment in Korea?: Causative Considerations and Solutions to Overtreatment
|
|
Cheong Yoo-Seock
Park Seok-Gun
|
|
|
Abstract
|
|
|
|
Overtreatment (or unnecessary treatment) occurs when medical services are provided with a higher volume or cost than is appropriate. Of course, practicing good medicine and avoiding unnecessary harm have always been principles of medical practice. Currently there is a new emphasis on reducing practices that are likely to have limited benefit or that involve potential harm. Waste due to overtreatment has been described as a violation of the principle of justice on the assumption that every system has limited resources and any wasted resource necessarily means those resources will no longer be available for use by others in need. Overtreatment may also cause direct harm to patients, thus violating the principle of nonmaleficence. Physicians are rarely motivated by the desire to achieve system efficiency or to save money for its own sake. However, it is widely understood that physicians should be motivated by a desire to do the right thing in terms of promoting the patient’s best interest. And doing the right thing includes an ethical imperative to provide parsimonious care. Recognizing this fact helps to bridge the enormous quality chasm that still exists between the medical care that is currently provided and the medical care that should be provided. The purpose of this study is to identify and assess the factors that cause overtreatment (un-necessary treatment) in the Korean medical system and to suggest certain solutions to this problem.
|
|
|
KEYWORD
|
|
|
overtreatment, overscreening, overdiagnosis, professionalism, incentives, pay-for-performance
|
|
|
FullTexts / Linksout information
|
|
|
|
|
|
Listed journal information
|
|
 
|