AMA meeting: CEJA to study doctors' duty to guarantee access

The ethics body also tackled conflicts of interest in sports medicine.

By Kevin B. O'Reilly, AMNews staff. Dec. 3, 2007.

Honolulu -- Is access to health care a right? How could such a right be enforced, and what exactly does it entail?

These were some of questions surrounding access to health care that delegates considered at the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs' open forum held during the AMA's Interim Meeting last month.

"There's a phenomenon in the nursing ethics world known as moral distress, which is knowing what the right thing to do is, but not being able to do it," said Susan Goold, MD, a CEJA member who introduced the topic for discussion. She said doctors experience moral distress when they know what treatment a patient needs but cannot provide it due to financial barriers.

Several delegates urged CEJA to avoid rights language when formulating ethical policy on access. "Once we say something is a right, it gives the government the opportunity to confiscate our services and the revenues of other people in order to provide that service," said Michael R. Redmond, MD, a Pensacola, Fla., ophthalmologist.

Some delegates said CEJA should put medical care in context as a market service for which physicians should be paid appropriately and be wary of overrun emergency departments or underfunded clinics that offer access in name only. Yet others said it's long overdue for health care to be viewed as a basic service to which everyone is entitled.