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eBook details

• Title: National Committee for Quality Assurance (Letters) (Letter to the Editor)
• Author : Social Work
• Release Date : January 01, 2004
• Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 174 KB

Description

In "Managing Managed Care through Accreditation Standards Neuman and Ptak (July 2003) extolled the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) in its mission to accredit managed care organizations (MCOs). However, the authors failed to investigate the NCQA's corporate loyalties. They simply accepted the NCQA's account of itself as "an independent, private, nonprofit organization ..." accrediting "more than 50 percent of all MCOs in the nation" (p. 385). Given social work's claim of advocacy for disenfranchised populations, it is irreconcilable to merely repeat corporate declarations when daily news stories disclose corporate deception and environmental degradation--often involving the health care industry. Scrutiny of the NCQA's economic context and corporate constituents reveals goals opposed to equitable health care. Globally, healthcare comprises 7 percent to 14 percent of gross national product. At that scale of economy, drug and insurance conglomerates seek control of the "intellectual property" related to health. Medical interventions don't just emerge from pure science. They are increasingly circumscribed by "quality control" and "best practices" standards set by corporations (McDowell, 2000), key definitions written by insurers such as medical necessity, treatment restrictions based on actuarial cost-benefit analysis, and research constricted by proprietary contractual rights (Bodenheimer, 2000). Intense corporate influence also extends to continuing education, journals, medical information companies, grand rounds, and so forth (Valenstein, 1998). All of the above are then further encoded into the "orthodox standards" of the healing arts through case law.

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