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The major challenge with this act among China’s physician is that the evaluation is solely one sided. It must be determined the reasoning for this type of ethical analysis and the intended purpose of the obtained data beside rankings. The evaluation of a physician should be based on an array of factors including

1) The physician’s quality rating among its active community
2) The number of successfully procedures versus unsuccessful
3) The quality of service provided by the practice such as waiting, availability and etc.
4) The cost of the medical practice, acceptable insurance, and location.
5) Physician accessibility to its clients;

There are an array of immediate factors, however, without the opinion of the general public the survey doesn’t justify pros or cons of the physician; in turn, the ranking does not truly validating the efficiency of the medial practice. In the U.S. a similar process took place among physicians with the rating system conducted by the insurance companies. The challenge with this process was that it wasn’t based on the general public perspective, but based on the type of medical procedures approved by the doctors.

In many cases, hospital, doctors, and other medical practices pay a rank,ing fee in order to present a false perspective of the facilities public image. These action not only cause a false selection process among the general public, but it assist in justifying the unethical medical practices within the U.S. s

As a medical professional and an individual living among the general public, I would not utilize a physician’s evaluation process solely based on the evaluation of the government. There must be other critical factor involved in order to make a critical decision about a physician prior to my selection process.

Sorry China!

Debra Xiangjun wrote @ February 3rd, 2008 at 12:29 am
First of all, this article only provides a small portion. The complete version is here:
Medical workers in all levels and types of medical institutions will have ethic records and will be inspected and evaluated annually says China’s Ministry of Health.

The Ministry of Health and State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine jointly launched “Directions on Establishing Ethics Inspection and Evaluation System for Medical Workers”. It is the first time of raising the idea of building an inspection and evaluation system for medical workers in China. The result of the evaluation will be made public and directly connect with promotions, employment and performance-based salaries. The annual evaluation will be divided into three parts: self evaluation, section office evaluation and unit evaluation.

Ministry of Health says the evaluation result rankings will have four levels: excellent, good, average and poor. The main content of the evaluation will include medical action, dressing and attitude of the medical staff. Yet in this evaluation system, healing the sick and serving the people are the primary criteria within the judging framework.

If any medical worker has a poor performance, he or she will be punished accordingly. Eight types of behavior will be viewed as poor work: asking for money, goods or other profiteering from patients or their families in medical activities; accepting money given by companies who produce medicine, medical equipment, medical consumption goods or salesman of these companies in clinical diagnoses and treatment activities; violating policies of medical services and prices, charging more or charging privately which causes serious results; hiding, faking or destroying medical documents or relative files; careless performance which causes medical accidents or serious medical mistakes; giving fake medical advice or participating in fake medical advertisements or promotions; bad attitude in medical services which causes bad influence on others or serious results in the care of patients; other activity deemed to be serious violations of professional ethics or medical moral and ethics by the audit board.

www.chinesemedicinetimes.com
Taken from: http://www.chinacsr.com/2008/01/08/2…thics-records/

Personally, I think this is a good system, which reflects not only the core of Chinese society but also more of what healthcare is and/or should be. Interning with a work group in mid-South China for more than seven months last year taught me more than I could express here. One of them, of course, was practicing Chinese medicine within a society in which “face” is also important.

The ethics here serve as a reminder for health practitioners that their profession is one that is considered sacred, and is actually a return to some of the criteria utilized in the 1960s and 1970s. If anyone has the chance to read the book called “Serve the People” detailing Chinese Healthcare during that time, you might see where this is leading.

Also, let’s face it. Pharmaceuticals have been producing all kinds of unwanted and unintended side effects including the deafness of one third of all Chinese children. Many western medicne physicians have been courted by Big Pharma and highly rewarded through compensation similar to that experienced within the US in the 1980s. However, the value of a life and responsibility is a very serious thing in China. Look at the unfolding of events throughout the summer of 2007. Two officials within the equivalent of the Chinese FDA have been punished- one executed and the other imprisoned for life over corruption.
The Ethics Policy is the soft political way of saying there are harsh consequences for violating the sacred contracts within the profession itself. It is also placing all doctors and healthcare workers on level ground, not supporting any medicine above the other or valuing them in dissimialr or unequal manners.

Read in its entirety, I cannot help but wonder what would happen if the whole world adopted such policies. Would it raise the bar for many? Would we have more integrative or dedicated teams? Would it restore faith and perhaps bring more healing?

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