Towards Patient-Centered Conflicts of Interest Policy

Financial conflicts of interest exist between industry and physicians, and these relationships have the power to incluence physicians´medical practice. Transparency about conflicts matters for ensuring adequate informed consent, controlling healthcare expenditure, and encouraging physicians´reflection on professionalism. The US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the Open Payments Program (OPP) to publicly disclose and bring transparency to the relationships between industry and physicians in the United States. These changes considerably improve transparency and the utility of available data, and caan furthermore enhance professionalism and accountability by encouraging physicians to reflect more actively on their own practices. 

Continuity of care and referral rate: challenges for the future of health care

As health care costs rise, an increasingly greater proportion of the gross domestic product is spent on health care. In this context, Continuity of care could reduce health care consumption by patients and reduce the number of referrals to specialist care, but it is unknown if there is a difference in referral rates to specific medical specialties.

The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between continuity of care and both the referral rate (referrals per patient per year) and the medical specialties for which this relationship was strongest.