…store clerk, who might be the customer's peer, could be humiliating, and in destroying any semblance of privacy, such a requirement would deter women from purchasing emergency contraception. Imagine the scene at the checkout counter: with a line of impatient customers waiting behind you, you must show…

…hypercalcemia in healthy persons. 2 In March 2004, the product distributor announced that during the previous month it had received three complaints from customers who had been hospitalized for hypercalcemia and vitamin D toxicity. The same month, the product manufacturer recalled 1600 bottles of the product…

…of a formal medical school graduation ceremony until 1804, when it was incorporated into the commencement exercises at Montpellier, France. 2 The custom spread in fits and starts on both sides of the Atlantic during the 19th century, but even well into the 20th century relatively few American physicians…

…recommend a specific test. After paying with a credit card (DNA Direct does not accept health insurance) and speaking with a counselor on the telephone, customers receive a requisition signed by the company's medical director and a test kit to take to a phlebotomist, who will draw their blood and send it to…

…husband's body, she hears the social worker tell the physician in charge, “It's okay. . . . She's a pretty cool customer.” Later, she writes, “I wondered what an uncool customer would be allowed to do. Break down? Require sedation? Scream?” In the neurosurgical ICU where Quintana is slowly recovering…

…United States is NightHawk Radiology Services of Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. In 2007, the firm acquired two other teleradiology companies, increasing its customer base, which, it claims, now includes about a quarter of U.S. hospitals. NightHawk has more than 100 affiliated radiologists, about half of them in…

…on six key issues (see table) may speed convergence on a middle ground. First, who decides when measures of efficiency are adequate for customer use — customers or service providers? Physicians argue that available measures of efficiency are insufficiently refined, whereas consumers and purchasers…

…records at Bethlehem and other hospitals. The result is a richly detailed picture of the nature of psychiatric practice in 18th-century London. Customers and Patrons of the Mad-Trade offers a rare opportunity to look over the shoulder of a professional ancestor as he goes about his practice. It also…

…being able to fill prescriptions on the spot, and the clinic draws customers to the store. The operational model is equally well constructed. The originators based their design on the McDonald's hamburger chain, in which customers select items from a limited menu. The services listed are highly standardized…

…. This has become a popular online activity, with hundreds of physician reviews appearing daily. Proponents of such sites view them as a form of customer feedback and see patients as consumers who have a right to express their opinions about services they pay for. Critics find the sites defamatory and…

…universal-access model features key elements of managed care, such as “medical homes,” defined participation and point-of-service fees, and customer service. It provides inpatient and outpatient care, tertiary subspecialty care, prescription coverage, laboratory services, durable medical equipment…

…average must pay the fund. Thus, insurers' incentives for risk selection are substantially reduced but not entirely removed. Insurers are meant to be customer-driven organizers of care for the people they insure, similar to American health maintenance organizations. To improve care management, insurers are…

…rebates and discounts that drug manufacturers negotiate with third-party purchasers, in 1999, a typical customer without prescription-drug coverage paid at least 15 percent more per drug than a customer with coverage. 10 Although differential pricing is a long-standing practice of the pharmaceutical industry…

…drugs in our prescriber guidelines.” A government study revealed that in 1991, the “best price” offered by a manufacturer to a private-sector customer implied a discount of 50 percent or more off the wholesale list price for 32 percent of all patented drugs. 27 Paradoxically, such discounting has…

…formulary, cost-sharing rates for specific drugs, rules governing utilization (e.g., prior-authorization rules), mail-order opportunities, quality of customer service, and the location of contract pharmacies. Such differences hardly explain the large price differentials, but they do complicate consumers'…

…medications and to ensure the safety of drugs prescribed in combination. Courts have held that pharmacists, like other professionals, owe their customers a duty of care. 19 In short, pharmacists are not automatons completing tasks; they are integral members of the health care team. Thus, it seems inappropriate…

…disease and relieving suffering: a skilled staff and the diagnostic and therapeutic technologies they need. Delivery organizations served two key customers, doctors and patients; their performance was judged primarily by the quality of their resources and how effectively they brought them and the patient…

…program from another, and a laboratory information system from yet another. Individual systems do not need to perform all functions. (Analogously, a customer cannot apply for a mortgage at an ATM.) But substitutability goes beyond interoperability. Just as consumers may swap out applications on their iPhones…

…the actor.” Whether a duty exists in a particular case is a question of law for the court to decide “by reference to existing social values and customs and appropriate social policy.” Regarding public policy, Ireland noted that physicians have a duty to inform their patients of side effects of drugs…

…the transparency of the health care industry's performance and providers' accountability for improved performance. This more cohesive, bipartisan customer voice has boosted the courage of government players to notch up providers' accountability, despite the wariness of the health care industry. Second…