January 6th, 2009

In a column published today in the New York Times, writer Denise Grady tells the story of a relative who survived rectal cancer to illustrate the fact that the quality of cancer care can vary widely from one hospital to the next.  In the process, she discusses the ethics of doctors telling patients the truth about the type of care they are able to receive.  Writes Grady:

An article published online in October in the journal PLoS Medicine really hit home with me. Noting that the quality of cancer care is uneven, its authors argued that as part of the informed-consent process, doctors have an ethical obligation to tell patients if they are more likely to survive, be cured, live longer or avoid complications by going to Hospital A instead of Hospital B. And that obligation holds even if the doctor happens to work at Hospital B, and revealing the truth might mean patients will take their business someplace else.

“It’s only fair,” said Dr. Leonidas G. Koniaris, an author of the article and a cancer surgeon at the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami.

…

But patients are not often told during the informed-consent process that the results of cancer treatment can vary among hospitals, according to Dr. Koniaris and his co-author, Nadine Housri, a medical student.

“I think it’s sort of starting to happen but hasn’t really become a dialogue yet,” Dr. Koniaris said.

Read more at the New York Times.