Opinion: Should physicians work for hospitals?

In the short term, hospitals may reap financial rewards by employing large numbers of physicians, wrote Richard Gunderman, MD, PhD, in a recent post on the Atlantic website. Over the longer term, however, the vitality of both individual physicians and the entire profession of medicine seems likely to decline, with deleterious consequences for patient care. To protect and promote the future health of the medical profession, it is important that physicians continue to base their decisions primarily on what is best for the patient, not what is best for the hospital.

Source: The Atlantic