In this week’s lecture, we studied the “Marcus Welby Medicine”(MWM) model. In MWM, primary care physicians serve as the “captain of the ship” who direct our health care system, and what separates Dr. Welby from other “sales” people is trust. In fact, as Dr. Arrow mentions in his article, “the social obligation for best practice is part of the commodity the physician sells”. Patients cannot directly measure whether the MD is trustworthy, but believes that the socialization within the medical community fosters appropriate MD motivations.
We also learned that despite being fondly remembered as an “ideal” example of how a primary care physician (PCP) should operate, the MWM model was subject to inefficiencies such as demand inducement.
