The American healthcare system has a physician autonomy problem, according to Sandeep Jauhar, MD, PhD, a practicing cardiologist and opinion writer for The New York Times.
In Dr. Jauhar's latest column for The New York Times, he wrote about the decline of the physician leader and the concurrent growth in business leaders at hospitals. Less than 5 percent of hospitals are now physician-led, while the number of administrators without medical training has grown 30-fold over the last three decades, according to Dr. Jauhar.
While this trend may have been a response to concerns about financial efficiency and clinical care consistency at hospitals, Dr. Jauhar believes it may not always be in the best interest of the patients, citing a 2011 study that found hospitals with physician leaders scored higher on quality measures. "The very best hospitals in America are still run by physician chief executives — Toby Cosgrove at the Cleveland Clinic, for example, and John Noseworthy at the Mayo Clinic," he wrote.
Read the full op-ed here.
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