Conclusions: The recent trend has been to rely on proxy decision making for incompetent patients. Support for proxy decision making has failed to acknowledge the growing body of ethical and empirical research suggesting that ...

The use of the Quality Adjusted Life-Year (QALY) as a measure of the benefit obtained from health care expenditure has been attacked on the ground that it gives a lower value to preserving the lives of people with a ...

In the traditional 'fix-it' model of medical decision making, the identified problem is typically characterized by a diagnosis that indicates a deviation from normalcy. When a medical problem is multifaceted and the available ...

...In this paper we will limit our focus to how the decision in Cruzan is likely to affect the doctor-patient relationship, especially in the critical activities surrounding decision-making about the use of life sustaining ...

The authors of this Sounding Board article discuss how the new approach to assessment of biomedical technologies that incorporates considerations of effectiveness, patient preferences, and costs, differs from the old ...