A new survey from the American Medical Association, examining the attitudes of 1000 physicians regarding prior authorization has results that will come as no surprise to health care practitioners, but should serve as a wake-up call for the insurance industry; docs are not happy.

Prior authorization is frequently characterized by insurance companies as an effort to deliver the best possible therapy to the patient and to avoid unnecessary care, but many physicians I've spoken with seem to think it is simply a tactic to make expensive care more onerous, driving down the costs to the insurance companies.

The AMA survey is the first to characterize the feelings on prior authorization across a broad swath of physicians and the results are quite disturbing.