Earlier this month, an oncologist in Kentucky contacted me. After reading my commentary last year, she recognized the same negative effect on her patients of the immediate release of test results. They were spending terrified days and sleepless nights worrying over incomprehensible test reports. Empowered by the shared experience, the physician worked with hospital committees and state medical societies, eventually bringing the concern to her state legislature..
As I learned of this development, I was struck by the widespread support for the initiative. Throughout the legislative process, the Kentucky bill was strongly backed not only by physicians, nurses and both political parties, but also by patients. The law was not viewed as a threat to transparency or empowerment, but rather as a means to communicate effectively, an acceptable trade-off between the competing anxieties of waiting and misunderstanding.
Kentucky is the first state to address the unintended consequences of the Cures Act. Let us hope that others, including Texas, soon follow. As we have learned countless times in the era of modern technology, more and faster is not always better. Medicine remains an art, customized by clinicians to the circumstances of individual patients and diagnoses. Any updates to this centuries-old profession should require that we understand the implications before we implement the change.
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