Total Transparency Manifesto
We are patients and providers who believe that doctors need to be honest, transparent, and accountable.
When we go to the doctor, we are vulnerable and need to trust that our doctors have our best interests at heart.
Doctors have to tell each other at conferences if they are paid by drug companies or medical device companies; they should also tell their patients about these potential conflicts of interest. They need to be open with patients if their employers pay them more to do more, or to do less. These incentives directly affect patient care.
We believe that informed consent isn't complete without doctors' disclosure of how their financial incentives align with their treatment recommendations.
We also believe that patients have a right to know our doctors’ views on healthcare issues such as preventive health, integrative medicine, shared decision-making, end-of-life care, and women’s health. Such beliefs can have an important impact on the provider-patient relationship, and patients need ready access to this information to be empowered to choose the right doctor for us.
Those of us who are doctors, nurses, healthcare providers, and providers-in-training affirm through Who’s My Doctor and this Total Transparency Manifesto that our patients' best interests are our best interests. We know that patients come to us at a time of vulnerability, so we will be vulnerable too. This is a partnership; we are in this together.
With this pledge, we are coming together as patients, doctors, and healthcare providers to rebuild our healthcare system into one that upholds professionalism, prioritizes patient values, and respects human dignity.
Updates
Reached 5,000 supporters
January 21, 2016
October 5, 2015
I have been reading the stories you describe in the comments and the patterns of hidden medical bias are staggering. Please call your local medical board office today to demand they adopt these disclosure standards. We are currently drafting a formal briefing for these board members to explain why patients deserve full disclosure on financial incentives.
Reached 1,000 supporters
November 18, 2014
November 15, 2014
We are approaching one thousand signatures and need to hit this milestone before we present our demands to the medical board. Post the link to your Facebook timeline and text the petition to three friends right now.
Reached 100 supporters
January 20, 2014
38 Comments
As a professional actor, I have played sales reps (for major drug companies) who point out the "benefits" of the drug being peddled to the physicians who in turn benefit by prescribing to their patients. What an "eye-opener" some of these scripts have been. This T.T.M. started (I presume) by Dr. Wen, is a GREAT and welcome opportunity for us all to change. Change our beliefs in health care, health awareness and preventive and alternative care within our western system! Hurrah and kudos to all who choose to participate! Thank you.
I'm a finance professional. I am required by the standards of my profession to disclose conflicts of interests when recommending financial products for my clients. Failure to do so constitutes an ethical breach. It is astounding that we don't have the same standard for doctors whose profession is held in such high regard. To the doctors of America and those in the healthcare profession, surely we can do better for the American public.
After seeing how my parents suffered at the hands of medical professionals in their final days, this is a very important issue to me as I begin to age, and begin needing more and more specialist care myself. Family doctors I think have more respect for the individual as they learn to know you over the years, but with specialists, you become a collection of body parts to be 'cured' without respect for the individual or his quality of life. Thank you for beginning this discussion. I heard about this petition on NPR program this afternoon.
The Doctor I've been seeing for the last ten years became more concerned with his profits then with my help, he ordered expensive test with no explanation why and furious with me when I refused them. He offered no explanation why they were needed. So I requested to see another Doctor within the same clinic. I saw him once and he chewed me out for having the audacity to doubt the first Doctor and then to chew me out for turning down an unnecessary surgery that I researched (twice) and rejected without even considering my concerns. It became clear very quickly that this clinic is profit oriented not patient oriented.
Applied medicine is often more art than science, thus a personal connection between doctor and patient is an important, if not essential component of the well being of BOTH. Pleased as I am by Leana's initiative, I think the cause may be effectively supported by the constituency of patients who inform their care-givers of the importance of transparency to them and who urge their doctors to subscribe to the manifesto.
In Europe it is the same problematic situation. In the last years Ive had unimaginable "horror" stories with doctors, not necessarily technical mistakes but mainly human ones (I guess Im attricting sociopaths or their number is generally very high among doctors and Im just prone to trigger them, I dont know). There should be a psychological test before entering medical university and high emphasis on empathic behaviour (it should ideally be taught at primary schools but anyways), also new health care workers should be trained to focus on prevention rather than on healing (not to "heal" healty individuals and intervene under all circumstances, to the countrary: only if it is essential), start to teach a holistic attitude combining Western-Eastern methods instead of overemphasizing drug treatment: medical universities and professional practice should go financially independent from pharmaceutical industry, and stop over-emphasizing toxic drug treatment; and rehabilitate Hypocrates oath into actual practice: DO NOT HARM!!! These should be essential. All medical consultations and treatment should be recorded and both patients and doctors should have a copy to secure both good- willed patients and doctors, and for science and educational purposes. Primarily human deficiancies (evil and purposful harming) should be filtered out by the records, also patterns of mistakes. Only those should be doctors for whom it is a passion, a mission, not just a prestigious well paying profession.
I feel likea cow, most doctors i visit treat me as swinging door they spend very little time with me and pass me on to the next Doctor or physical therapist and when I go to those health care providers I'm treated very quickly printed information in hand and send back out the door what happened to doctors who really cared and I don't mean that emotionally
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Total Transparency Manifesto
We are patients and providers who believe that doctors need to be honest, transparent, and accountable.
When we go to the doctor, we are vulnerable and need to trust that our doctors have our best interests at heart.
Doctors have to tell each other at conferences if they are paid by drug companies or medical device companies; they should also tell their patients about these potential conflicts of interest. They need to be open with patients if their employers pay them more to do more, or to do less. These incentives directly affect patient care.
We believe that informed consent isn't complete without doctors' disclosure of how their financial incentives align with their treatment recommendations.
We also believe that patients have a right to know our doctors’ views on healthcare issues such as preventive health, integrative medicine, shared decision-making, end-of-life care, and women’s health. Such beliefs can have an important impact on the provider-patient relationship, and patients need ready access to this information to be empowered to choose the right doctor for us.
Those of us who are doctors, nurses, healthcare providers, and providers-in-training affirm through Who’s My Doctor and this Total Transparency Manifesto that our patients' best interests are our best interests. We know that patients come to us at a time of vulnerability, so we will be vulnerable too. This is a partnership; we are in this together.
With this pledge, we are coming together as patients, doctors, and healthcare providers to rebuild our healthcare system into one that upholds professionalism, prioritizes patient values, and respects human dignity.
Updates
Reached 5,000 supporters
January 21, 2016
October 5, 2015
I have been reading the stories you describe in the comments and the patterns of hidden medical bias are staggering. Please call your local medical board office today to demand they adopt these disclosure standards. We are currently drafting a formal briefing for these board members to explain why patients deserve full disclosure on financial incentives.
Reached 1,000 supporters
November 18, 2014
November 15, 2014
We are approaching one thousand signatures and need to hit this milestone before we present our demands to the medical board. Post the link to your Facebook timeline and text the petition to three friends right now.
Reached 100 supporters
January 20, 2014
38 Comments
I'm thrilled by this! I left organized Medicine with a lucrative emergency medicine career to start a "cash only" integrative practice so that my financial incentives are always aligned only with my patients. It is so refreshing. For the first time in my life, I'm free of the pervasive perverse financial incentives of organized health care, hidden inside innocuous sounding things like quality measures, national guidelines (designed by conflicted experts) and all the drug rep material. Free at last, free at last.
As a professional actor, I have played sales reps (for major drug companies) who point out the "benefits" of the drug being peddled to the physicians who in turn benefit by prescribing to their patients. What an "eye-opener" some of these scripts have been. This T.T.M. started (I presume) by Dr. Wen, is a GREAT and welcome opportunity for us all to change. Change our beliefs in health care, health awareness and preventive and alternative care within our western system! Hurrah and kudos to all who choose to participate! Thank you.
I'm a finance professional. I am required by the standards of my profession to disclose conflicts of interests when recommending financial products for my clients. Failure to do so constitutes an ethical breach. It is astounding that we don't have the same standard for doctors whose profession is held in such high regard. To the doctors of America and those in the healthcare profession, surely we can do better for the American public.
After seeing how my parents suffered at the hands of medical professionals in their final days, this is a very important issue to me as I begin to age, and begin needing more and more specialist care myself. Family doctors I think have more respect for the individual as they learn to know you over the years, but with specialists, you become a collection of body parts to be 'cured' without respect for the individual or his quality of life. Thank you for beginning this discussion. I heard about this petition on NPR program this afternoon.
The Doctor I've been seeing for the last ten years became more concerned with his profits then with my help, he ordered expensive test with no explanation why and furious with me when I refused them. He offered no explanation why they were needed. So I requested to see another Doctor within the same clinic. I saw him once and he chewed me out for having the audacity to doubt the first Doctor and then to chew me out for turning down an unnecessary surgery that I researched (twice) and rejected without even considering my concerns. It became clear very quickly that this clinic is profit oriented not patient oriented.
Applied medicine is often more art than science, thus a personal connection between doctor and patient is an important, if not essential component of the well being of BOTH. Pleased as I am by Leana's initiative, I think the cause may be effectively supported by the constituency of patients who inform their care-givers of the importance of transparency to them and who urge their doctors to subscribe to the manifesto.
In Europe it is the same problematic situation. In the last years Ive had unimaginable "horror" stories with doctors, not necessarily technical mistakes but mainly human ones (I guess Im attricting sociopaths or their number is generally very high among doctors and Im just prone to trigger them, I dont know). There should be a psychological test before entering medical university and high emphasis on empathic behaviour (it should ideally be taught at primary schools but anyways), also new health care workers should be trained to focus on prevention rather than on healing (not to "heal" healty individuals and intervene under all circumstances, to the countrary: only if it is essential), start to teach a holistic attitude combining Western-Eastern methods instead of overemphasizing drug treatment: medical universities and professional practice should go financially independent from pharmaceutical industry, and stop over-emphasizing toxic drug treatment; and rehabilitate Hypocrates oath into actual practice: DO NOT HARM!!! These should be essential. All medical consultations and treatment should be recorded and both patients and doctors should have a copy to secure both good- willed patients and doctors, and for science and educational purposes. Primarily human deficiancies (evil and purposful harming) should be filtered out by the records, also patterns of mistakes. Only those should be doctors for whom it is a passion, a mission, not just a prestigious well paying profession.
I feel likea cow, most doctors i visit treat me as swinging door they spend very little time with me and pass me on to the next Doctor or physical therapist and when I go to those health care providers I'm treated very quickly printed information in hand and send back out the door what happened to doctors who really cared and I don't mean that emotionally
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I'm thrilled by this! I left organized Medicine with a lucrative emergency medicine career to start a "cash only" integrative practice so that my financial incentives are always aligned only with my patients. It is so refreshing. For the first time in my life, I'm free of the pervasive perverse financial incentives of organized health care, hidden inside innocuous sounding things like quality measures, national guidelines (designed by conflicted experts) and all the drug rep material. Free at last, free at last.