Cost containment forces physicians into ethical and quality of care compromises.

Contemporary cost containment measures ignore patients' need for privacy, destroy long-term doctor-patient relationships, and demand ethical and standard of care compromises. Economic considerations have distracted the physician and he/she no longer focuses primarily on the patient's welfare. The superficiality of the doctor-patient relationship and the cost-cutting efforts have jointly contributed to the deterioration of the quality of medical care. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate that the care physicians dispense in the office is adversely affected by cost containment regulations.