Running head: LAW AND HEALTH CARE SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION

Assignment #1

Jennifer Smith

HSA 515

Dr. Mezu

October 27, 2013

Justify your position about the importance of the physician-patient and hospital-patient relationships.
The doctor–patient relationship has been and remains a keystone of care: the medium in which data are gathered, diagnoses and plans are made, compliance is accomplished, and healing, patient activation, and support are provided. To managed care organizations, its importance rests also on market savvy: satisfaction with the doctor–patient relationship is a critical factor in people's decisions to join and stay with a specific organization.
A patient must have confidence in the competence of their physician and must feel that they can confide in him or her. For most physicians, the establishment of good rapport with a patient is important (Lipkin 2012). Some medical specialties, such as psychiatry and family medicine, emphasize the physician-patient relationship more than others, such as pathology or radiology. The quality of the patient-physician relationship is important to both parties. The better the relationship in terms of mutual respect, knowledge, trust, shared values and perspectives about disease and life, and time available, the better will be the amount and quality of information about the patient's disease transferred in both directions, enhancing accuracy of diagnosis and increasing the patient's knowledge about the disease (Lipkin 2012).
Where such a relationship is poor the physician's ability to make a full assessment is compromised and the patient is more likely to distrust the diagnosis and proposed treatment, causing decreased compliance to actually follow the medical advice. In these circumstances and also in cases where there is genuine divergence of medical opinions, a second opinion from another