The good, the bad, and the ugly: the unnecessarily broad impact of qui tam civil False Claims Act cases on rural health care providers.

Optimisation of Healthcare Contracts: Tensions Between Standardisation and Innovation; Comment on “Competition in Healthcare: Good, Bad or Ugly?”

An important determinant of health system performance is contracting. Providers often respond to financial incentives, despite the ethical underpinnings of medicine, and payers can craft contracts to influence performance. Yet contracting is highly imperfect in both single-payer and multi-payer health systems. Arguably, in a competitive, multi-payer environment, contractual innovation may occur...

Court of Appeals Rejects Quality of Care Standard for False Claims Act Liability (January 2002)

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently issued a decision that could narrow the scope of the prosecution of cases brought against health care providers under the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3729, et seq. (the “Act”). This decision, United States ex rel. Mikes v. Straus, (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=2nd&navby=case&no=006269) does significan...

Good, bad and ugly: Exploring the Machiavellian power dynamics of leadership in medical education

Introduction: Medical education requires participation of variousstakeholders and this contributes to power dynamics operating atmultiple levels. Personality traits of an individual can affect thesmooth execution of the educational programmes and eventuallythe professionalism of the environment. With the increased focuson leadership traits in medical education and collaboration inhealth care se...

Bad habits: the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act are unconstitutional under Article II.

Competition in Healthcare: Good, Bad or Ugly?

The role of competition in healthcare is much debated. Despite a wealth of international experience in relation to competition, evidence is mixed and contested and the debate about the potential role for competition is often polarised. This paper considers briefly some of the reasons for this, focusing on what is meant by “competition in healthcare” and why it is more valuable to think about th...