Corporate Logic in Clinical Care: The Case of Diabetes Management.

As large corporations come to dominate U.S. health care, clinical medicine is increasingly market-driven and governed by business principles. We examine ways in which health insurers and health care systems are transforming the goals and means of clinical practice. Based on ethnographic research of diabetes management in a large health care system, we argue that together these organizations redefine clinical care in terms that prioritize financial goals and managerial logics, above the needs of individual patients. We demonstrate how emphasis on quality metrics reduces clinical work to quantifiable outcomes, redefining diabetes management to be the pursuit of narrowly defined goal numbers, despite often serious health consequences of treatment. As corporate employees, clinicians are compelled to pursue goal numbers by the heavy emphasis payers and health systems place on quality metrics, and accessing the required medications becomes the central focus of clinical practice.

Racialized Risk in Clinical Care: Clinician Vigilance and Patient Responsibility.

Racial/ethnic identity is contingent and arbitrary, yet it is commonly used to evaluate disease risk and treatment response. Drawing on open-ended interviews with patients and clinicians in two US clinics, we explore how racialized risk is conceptualized and how it impacts patient care and experience. We found that racial/ethnic risk was a common but poorly defined construct for both patients and clinicians, who intermingled concepts of genetics, biology, behavior, and culture, while disregarding historical or structural context. We argue that racializing risk embodies social power in marked and unmarked bodies, reinforcing inequality along racial lines and undermining equitable health care.

"They Treat you a Different Way:" Public Insurance, Stigma, and the Challenge to Quality Health Care.

Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid Expansion programs are extending Medicaid eligibility and increasing access to care. However, stigma associated with public insurance coverage may importantly affect the nature and content of the health care beneficiaries receive. In this paper, we examine the health care stigma experiences described by a group of low-income public insurance beneficiaries. They perceive stigma as manifest in poor quality care and negative interpersonal interactions in the health care setting. Using an intersectional approach, we found that the stigma of public insurance was compounded with other sources of stigma including socioeconomic status, race, gender, and illness status. Experiences of stigma had important implications for how subjects evaluated the quality of care, their decisions impacting continuity of care, and their reported ability to access health care. We argue that stigma challenges the quality of care provided under public insurance and is thus a public health issue that should be addressed in Medicaid policy.