Financial and Legal Incentives for Non-Beneficial Treatment

From the Health Business Blog:

"Hopeless patients on their last legs can be highly profitable for providers and drugmakers, who in a fee for service environment can make money from the very high utilization. It would be interesting to break down an oncology practice’s profitability by stage of patient illness."

"The current medical system makes it very difficult for physicians to moderate the irrational use of care during the end of our patient’s lives. Even if patients themselves are not demanding “every possible intervention”, family members frequently do. Fear of litigation fuels provider’s use of medical futile interventions as much or more than desire for economic gain.”