Fee Splitting/Kickbacks

Arnold Relman Quote

Arnold Relman, MD, editor emeritus of the New England Journal of Emergency Medicine, spoke at the 1999 SAEM meeting on corporate medicine. In follow-up discussion with AAEM president Robert McNamara, he issued this quote on 7/1/99 for distribution by AAEM:

"Medicine is a profession and should remain so. In the practice of medicine it is unprofessional and unethical to make money from services not directly provided or supervised."

As AAEM has pointed out many times, the "business" dealings that in certain circles are accepted as the norm in EM are frowned upon by the rest of medicine. Unless we are willing to abdicate our status as professionals and relegate EM to nothing more than a corporate enterprise, we need to adhere to high ethical standards where exploitation of one professional by another is unacceptable.