Quality care, costs, market share, and income purposes of the American Academy of Dermatology Blue Ribbon Committee

Abstract

Definitions are offered for quality of health care, reasonable costs or fees, an appropriate share of the dermatologic market, and reasonable income or profit for dermatologists. Physician control of these items was almost complete in the recent past, but control is now passing rapidly to government in the form of regulations and to large health care corporations in the form of unbridled competition in the marketplace. Physicians, including dermatologists, must mobilize and unite to retain reasonable controls, especially over quality care and personal income. The Academy (as an organization of all of us) can help in this process, but individual dermatologists at local, regional, and national levels must play major roles in retention of controls.