Doctors can add one more who wants to tell them how to do their job: Medco CEO

Well if it isn’t Medicare trying to step in and to try and limit what patients can have access to and what can be prescribed, the new health reform movement can add one more entity wanting the government to set protocols on how doctors can treat patients. One thing below though that is an issue is what insurance companies pay for and he might be missing the boat a little bit here, as that is an issue, but he sells drugs, so I guess that would account for the perceptions above.

The one item though he may have a point on though is the meshing of science and clinical knowledge, as that has been a little slow as well, but with the pace that most physicians are keeping today, study time and going into areas that are still not exactly clinically outlined, may have it’s issues too, so I would guess until we walk a mile in their shoes, it’s hard to be a critic. Last year when I did my interview with Helicos, we did discuss the Coumadin test and the role is is playing today in personalized medicine. BD

Snow said the time has come for doctors to follow set protocols on how to treat patients, and to be paid based on whether they do it. Basically, ‘If X, then do Y,’ and ‘If Y, then do Z,’ sort of stuff. Snow concedes the public doesn’t trust the private sector to come up with these kinds of rules. So he wants some smart folks to get together in an “apolitical” body like the Fed, and do it themselves. “I’m fine with this big, national board creating this standard,” Snow says.

Doctors often bristle at the idea of these sorts of rulebooks, because they argue the rules don’t take into account the nuances and intangibles of caring for individual patients. Plus, they think insurers basically use such rules as excuses not to pay for things.

“I have no patience for a doctor who says, ‘I’m above it all, I don’t want to practice cookbook medicine,’” Snow says. Too many doctors, he says, just don’t keep up with the science. For instance, Medco last March asked 1,000 doctors who prescribe the potent blood-thinner Coumadin about a genetic test that the FDA has endorsed to keep patients from getting dangerous, excessive doses. Only three of them had heard of the test, he says. That’s an important test.

Health Blog : Medco CEO Wants Health Fed to Set Treatment Rules for Doctors