Our Advisory Board Member, Howard Wolinsky’s latest article on Medpage Today tiptoes around a very sensitive issue while making an excellent point. Place a bunch of different medical specialties in the same room to make a decision, the so called MultiD Approach, and you go a long way to neutralize a factor that can often act against patients’ best interests.

There’s an elephant gambolling through Howard’s article, acknowledged but not mentioned in so many words … and here’s the clue. The ‘MultiD’ approach appears to be restricted to Centers of Excellence and Medical Institutions where, as Dr. Kuban mentions – she doesn’t get paid for each patient she sees!

We are talking “financial conflict of interest”. That’s the same bad actor lurking in the background and chuckling as it gets the PSA test rather than the physician blamed for ‘overtreatment’. How often do you hear a community urologic oncologist recommending radiation – or a community radiation oncologist pushing surgery? These practitioners understand each others specialties and their side effects well enough, so it’s tough to buy the argument that it’s because they know their specialty best. Here at AnCan we would argue it’s because these docs  earn more money by treating the man themselves – the patients’ interests get subordinated to the doctors’ pockets.

AnCan totally endorses the MultiD Approach – but wonders how it will ever be implemented outside the salaried environment of large medical institutions and Centers of Excellence??.