The healthcare industry is currently undergoing a number of significant changes. While some of these shifts, like the growing adoption of electronic health records, are positive, experts are concerned about other changes that are taking place.

For example, a paper recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine pointed out the fact that medical terminology is increasingly shifting away from a doctor-patient paradigm in favor of a provider-consumer relationship.

Pamela Hartzband and Jerome Groopman wrote that this is not a desirable change because it reduces the doctor-patient relationship and removes any aspect of care. Personalized attention is brought down to the level of any other financial transaction.

The paper states that many advocates are pushing for hospitals and other care providers to standardize their operations and begin operating in a more industrialized manner in order to increase profitability. However, this setup puts medical professionals in the position of working to maximize the profits they can gain from "consumers," which may be counterproductive to the healing process.

"Reducing medicine to economics makes a mockery of the bond between the healer and the sick," the pair wrote.