If you have a heart attack anywhere in the US, treatment protocols will be followed. They are created following years of experimentation and analysis. They are as good as the experimentation and analysis permits. A major problem in the US medical system today is the apparent intrusion of biased, corporate driven research into what had been ‘pure’ research. Actually, maybe there’s never been real ‘pure’ research but, in the last twenty yeats, there has been such a flood of corrupt research found in  the literature that most physicians are reeling.

In many spheres of medicine, treatment protocols are anchored in ‘pretty good’ research.

In psychiatry, there is a great deal of controversy about every aspect of the ‘clinical research’, from conceptualization of ‘ways of being’ as ’illness’ to definitions of ‘success’ following treatment. Treatment protocols, anchored in this research are increasingly driving mental health care today.  

That is the context within which HMO’s and PPo’s operate today.