Planning and the Structure of the Medical Profession.

During the 1920s the growing complexity of medicine led to a bewildering range of new information for a physician to assimilate. Hospitals and clinics grew in number, and medical costs ranged upward to pay for them. Resources, both in medicine and for the public, were maldistributed, with physicians forced to make compromises in the treatment of patients between what was medically desirable and what the patient could afford to pay. All these issues affected the way medicine was organized and the quality and distribution of the service offered. Such problems were brought to a head by the social turbulence of the early 1930s. One of the most important issues facing medicine concerned the organization of the profession. The Depression cut doctors' profits, raised hospital costs, and strained medical services. As they did in other...