Chaos in Medical Practice?

A timely message:

Medical practice is far behind the plans that have been developed in industry and in many other forms of public service. It will require the most searching study of the facts and the application of these facts in the true spirit of the experimenter if we are to develop conditions that will make it possible for physicians to meet their own problems and for a single illness not to become a prolonged handicap to an individual or to a family….

Perhaps the medical school is not ready yet to insist on a training in economics, government, political science and history, and the relations of medicine thereto; but unless such training and thinking are soon started the present chaos in medical practice will inevitably make for high charges on the sick and an inadequate return to the physician.

Ray Lyman Wilbur, M.D.,

The Relationship of Medical Education to the Cost of Medical Care. Journal of the American Medical Association, April 27, 1929