ABSTRACT
Traditional Informed Consent is becoming increasingly inadequate, especially in the context of research biobanks. How much information is needed by patients for their consent to be truly informed? How does the quality of the information they receive match up to the quality of the information they ought to receive? How can information be conveyed fairly about future, non-predictable lines of research? To circumvent these difficulties, some scholars have proposed that current consent guidelines should be reassessed, with trust being used as a guiding principle instead of information. Here, we analyse one of these proposals, based on a Participation Pact, which is already being offered to patients at the Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, a comprehensive cancer hospital in Milan, Italy.
Subject(s)
Biological Specimen Banks , Biomedical Research/ethics , Choice Behavior , Informed Consent , Personal Autonomy , Researcher-Subject Relations/ethics , Trust , Biological Specimen Banks/ethics , Biological Specimen Banks/organization & administration , Comprehension , Contracts/ethics , Contracts/trends , Humans , Information Dissemination , Informed Consent/ethics , Italy , Patient Participation , Researcher-Subject Relations/psychology , Social ValuesABSTRACT
Third level health care providers are often highly integrated in the sense that they provide a broad variety of medical specialties. They mostly lack cooperative structures with physicians who are running private practices. By this "isolation", they realize disadvantages in the race for more patients. This is one reason why more university teaching hospitals are growingly interested in contracts for Integrated Health Care. Another field of growing needs for cooperative structures is rehabilitation to ensure achieved therapeutic success especially in highly specialized centers. The paper outlines these growing interests but also formulates preconditions for contracts which should be regarded if university hospitals are to become involved in Integrated Health Care.
Subject(s)
Delivery of Health Care, Integrated/trends , Hospitals, University/trends , Accreditation , Contracts/trends , Germany , Hospitals, University/economics , Humans , Marketing of Health Services/trendsABSTRACT
This paper reports in detail on a project of Integrated Health Care in cardiology at Essen, Germany. Information on the structure of the contract, the participants, the agreed claiming of benefits and provision of services are provided as well as relevant figures and contact data.