The Company Doctor: Risk, Responsibility, and Corporate Professionalism

To limit the skyrocketing costs of their employee's health insurance, companies such as Dow, Chevron, and IBM, as well as many HMOs, have hired physicians to supervise the medical care they provide. As Elaine Draper argues in "The Company Doctor" company doctors are bound by two conflicting ideals: serving the medical needs of their patients while protecting the company's bottom line. Draped analyses the advent of the corporate physician both as an independent phenomenon, and as an index of contemporary culture, reaching startling conclusions about the intersection of corporate culture and professional autonomy.