UMMC MMI

1. What are the four principles of medical ethics?

Autonomy: respect patient choices. Beneficence: act for the patient's benefit. Nonmaleficence: avoid unnecessary harm. Justice: treat people fairly and distribute resources equitably.

2. What is autonomy?

A patient's right to make informed decisions about their own healthcare, including the right to refuse treatment when legally and ethically competent.

3. What is beneficence?

The obligation to act in the patient's best interests and promote their well-being.

4. What is nonmaleficence?

The obligation to avoid causing unnecessary harm. It is often summarized as "do no harm."

5. What is justice in healthcare?

Fair and equitable treatment of patients and fair allocation of limited healthcare resources.

6. What is informed consent?

A process in which a patient receives understandable information about a treatment's risks, benefits, alternatives, and uncertainties and voluntarily agrees to it.

7. What is shared decision-making?

A process in which clinicians and patients combine medical evidence with the patient's values, preferences, and circumstances to make healthcare decisions.

8. What is a health disparity?

A difference in health outcomes or access to healthcare between populations that may be associated with social, economic, geographic, or other conditions.

9. What are social determinants of health?

Conditions in which people are born, live, work, learn, and age that influence health, such as housing, income, transportation, education, food access, and social environment.

10. Why are social determinants important to physicians?

A medically appropriate treatment plan may fail if a patient cannot afford medication, reach appointments, obtain healthy food, understand instructions, or safely store medications.

11. What is health equity?

The goal of giving people fair opportunities to achieve their best possible health by recognizing and addressing different barriers and needs.

12. What is the difference between equality and equity?

Equality gives everyone the same resources; equity recognizes that people may require different resources or support to have a fair opportunity to achieve similar health outcomes.

13. What is Medicaid?

A joint federal-state program providing health coverage to eligible low-income individuals and certain other populations. Eligibility and benefits vary by state.

14. What is Medicare?

A federal health insurance program primarily serving adults 65 and older and certain younger people with disabilities or specific medical conditions.

15. What is the Affordable Care Act?

A federal law that expanded insurance coverage, created health insurance marketplaces and subsidies, expanded Medicaid in participating states, and established protections including coverage for preexisting conditions.

16. Why does insurance status matter clinically?

Insurance can affect whether patients can afford medications, specialists, preventive care, diagnostic testing, and follow-up.

17. What is prior authorization?

An insurer requires approval before covering certain medications, procedures, tests, or services.

18. What is the argument for prior authorization?

It can reduce unnecessary, inappropriate, or excessively expensive care and encourage evidence-based treatment.

19. What is the concern about prior authorization?

It can delay medically necessary treatment, create administrative burden, and potentially harm patients when needed care is postponed.

20. What is CMS's WISeR model?

A Medicare model launched in 2026 that uses enhanced technology, including AI, in prior authorization for selected services vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, or inappropriate use. It is operating in six states, including Texas, from 2026-2031.

21. What ethical issue does AI-assisted prior authorization create?

An algorithm may make or influence a coverage decision affecting a patient's care. Important issues include accuracy, bias, transparency, appeals, human oversight, and accountability.

22. Should AI replace physicians?

AI should generally be viewed as a tool to augment clinical judgment rather than replace physician responsibility. Physicians still need to understand limitations, verify important outputs, protect patient data, and communicate decisions.

23. What are potential benefits of AI in healthcare?

Decision support, imaging assistance, research, documentation, administrative efficiency, pattern recognition, and potentially improved access or efficiency.

24. What are risks of AI in healthcare?

Bias, inaccurate outputs, hallucinations, privacy concerns, cybersecurity risks, automation bias, lack of transparency, and unclear accountability.

25. What is automation bias?

The tendency to over-trust an automated system's recommendation even when the recommendation may be incorrect.

26. What is the digital divide?

Unequal access to technology, internet connectivity, devices, or digital literacy that can prevent some patients from benefiting from telemedicine and digital healthcare.

27. What are benefits of telemedicine?

It can improve access for rural patients, reduce travel, facilitate follow-up, and expand access to some specialties and behavioral healthcare.

28. What are limitations of telemedicine?

Limited physical examination, technology failures, privacy concerns, broadband limitations, digital literacy barriers, and situations where in-person evaluation is necessary.

29. What is healthcare interoperability?

The ability of different healthcare information systems to exchange and meaningfully use patient information.

30. Why does interoperability matter?

It can reduce duplicate testing, improve communication between clinicians, and give providers a more complete picture of a patient's medical history.

31. What is the U.S. physician workforce problem?

The U.S. faces projected shortages and, importantly, maldistribution of physicians, with particularly significant challenges in primary care and underserved communities.

32. Why doesn't simply increasing medical school enrollment solve physician shortages?

Students still need residency training, and physicians may not ultimately practice in specialties or geographic areas where shortages are greatest.

33. How could the physician shortage be addressed?

Expand training where appropriate, increase residency capacity, improve retention, strengthen team-based care, support rural training, reduce administrative burden, and use incentives such as loan repayment.

34. What is a rural health desert?

A geographic area where residents have limited access to healthcare services because of distance, workforce shortages, facility closures, transportation barriers, or other factors.

35. Why is rural healthcare particularly important for UMMC?

UMMC serves Mississippi, a state with substantial rural healthcare needs. Rural access issues can include physician shortages, hospital sustainability, transportation, maternity care, and specialist availability.

36. What is one major current rural-health development in September 2026?

HHS announced nearly $25 million for 132 small rural hospitals to strengthen operations and preserve access to care.

37. What are possible solutions to rural physician shortages?

Rural training experiences, residency programs, loan repayment, scholarships, telemedicine, team-based care, improved hospital infrastructure, and incentives for long-term retention.

38. Should doctors be required to practice in underserved areas?

A strong answer recognizes both sides: society has an interest in equitable access, but physicians also have professional autonomy. Incentives, training, and supportive infrastructure may be more sustainable than coercion.

39. What is vaccine hesitancy?

Delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccination despite vaccine availability, often influenced by concerns about safety, misinformation, distrust, access, or risk perception.

40. What is the major vaccine-related U.S. healthcare issue in 2026?

The United States is experiencing a major measles resurgence. CDC reported 3,294 confirmed cases as of September 10, 2026, already exceeding the 2,289 confirmed cases reported for all of 2025.

41. Why is measles particularly concerning?

Measles is highly contagious and can cause serious complications. Outbreaks are more likely when immunity falls and the virus reaches communities with insufficient vaccination coverage.

42. What should a physician do when a parent refuses a vaccine for their child?

Understand the parent's concerns without judgment, provide evidence-based information, discuss benefits and risks, address misinformation, explain community implications, and follow applicable laws and professional obligations.

43. Why shouldn't a physician immediately dismiss a vaccine-hesitant patient?

Dismissiveness can damage trust and make the patient less receptive to future medical advice. Understanding the reason for hesitancy allows the clinician to address the actual concern.

44. What is herd immunity/community protection?

When enough people in a population are immune that transmission becomes more difficult, indirectly helping protect people who cannot be vaccinated or who do not develop adequate immunity.

45. What is the current COVID-19 situation in September 2026?

CDC estimated that COVID-19 infections were growing or likely growing in 35 states as of September 9, 2026. Current surveillance emphasizes that epidemic trends indicate direction rather than the total burden of disease.

46. What is Rₜ?

The estimated average number of new infections generated by one infected person at a given time. Rₜ above 1 generally indicates infections are growing; below 1 indicates they are declining.

47. What is public health surveillance?

The ongoing collection, analysis, interpretation, and communication of health data to detect and respond to disease and other health threats.

48. What is wastewater surveillance?

Testing community wastewater for biological indicators of disease. CDC uses wastewater monitoring for several infectious diseases, including COVID-19, influenza, RSV, measles, and avian influenza.

49. What is antimicrobial resistance?

When microorganisms evolve so that medications used to treat them become less effective or ineffective.

50. Why is antibiotic stewardship important?

Using antibiotics only when appropriate helps preserve their effectiveness, reduce adverse effects, and limit development of antimicrobial resistance.

51. A patient demands antibiotics for a viral infection. What should you do?

Understand the patient's concern, explain why antibiotics will not treat the virus, discuss symptomatic treatment and expected recovery, explain warning signs, and maintain the therapeutic relationship.

52. What is the opioid crisis?

A major public-health crisis involving opioid use disorder, overdose, and deaths involving prescription opioids, heroin, and illicitly manufactured fentanyl.

53. What is naloxone?

A medication that rapidly reverses opioid overdose by blocking opioid effects and can restore breathing when administered promptly.

54. What medications are used to treat opioid use disorder?

Buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone are evidence-based medications used in treatment.

55. How should physicians approach substance use disorder?

As a medical condition while maintaining appropriate safety and accountability. Avoiding stigma, offering evidence-based treatment, and addressing underlying social and medical needs are important.

56. Should a patient with substance use disorder receive an organ transplant?

Decisions should rely on transparent medical and ethical criteria such as expected benefit, medical eligibility, adherence considerations, and overall prognosis rather than moral judgments about whether someone "deserves" an organ.

57. Why is mental health a healthcare-access issue?

Patients may face shortages of behavioral-health professionals, cost barriers, stigma, long wait times, and difficulty obtaining timely crisis or outpatient care.

58. What should a physician do if a patient expresses suicidal thoughts?

Take the statement seriously, assess immediate safety and suicide risk, determine whether there is a plan or intent when appropriate, involve appropriate support and emergency resources, and follow confidentiality and safety obligations.

59. What is the difference between palliative care and hospice?

Palliative care focuses on symptom relief and quality of life at any stage of serious illness and can occur with curative treatment. Hospice generally focuses on comfort near the end of life when eligibility criteria are met.

60. What is a DNR order?

An instruction not to perform CPR if a patient's heart or breathing stops. It does not mean that the patient receives no medical treatment.

61. What is an advance directive?

A legal document allowing a person to communicate healthcare preferences or designate a decision-maker if they later cannot make decisions themselves.

62. What is maternal mortality?

Death during pregnancy or within the defined postpartum period from pregnancy-related causes. Important contributors include cardiovascular disease, hypertension, hemorrhage, mental health conditions, substance use, and barriers to care.

63. Why is maternal healthcare access especially important in rural communities?

Rural communities may have fewer obstetric clinicians and facilities, longer travel distances, limited emergency resources, and fewer options for prenatal and postpartum care.

64. What are health disparities in maternal health?

Differences in maternal outcomes can be associated with factors including geography, socioeconomic conditions, race/ethnicity, chronic disease, insurance, and access to timely prenatal, obstetric, and postpartum care.

65. What is the Medicare drug-price negotiation program?

A federal program through which Medicare negotiates prices for selected high-spending prescription drugs. The first negotiated prices took effect in 2026.

66. What is the ethical argument for lowering prescription drug prices?

Lower prices can improve affordability, medication adherence, and access, particularly for patients who struggle with high out-of-pocket costs.

67. What is the argument pharmaceutical companies make about drug pricing?

Revenue from successful products helps support research, development, clinical trials, and innovation, although the relationship between prices, research investment, and overall drug development is debated.

68. Why are GLP-1 medications an important current healthcare issue?

They are increasingly used for diabetes and obesity and raise questions about effectiveness, long-term treatment, cost, insurance coverage, access, side effects, and appropriate prescribing.

69. What ethical issues surround obesity treatment?

Physicians should recognize obesity as a complex medical condition while avoiding stigma. Treatment decisions should consider evidence, patient goals, risks, benefits, affordability, and long-term management.

70. What is physician burnout?

A work-related syndrome involving emotional exhaustion, detachment/cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy. It can be associated with workload, administrative burden, staffing problems, and working conditions.

71. Why is physician burnout a patient-safety issue?

Burnout can affect communication, attention, professionalism, retention, and the overall functioning of healthcare teams.

72. Is burnout simply an individual physician's responsibility?

No. Individual resilience can help, but system-level factors such as staffing, workflow, administrative burden, scheduling, and organizational culture also contribute.

73. What is the central ethical tension in public-health emergencies?

The balance between individual autonomy and protecting the population from serious harm, while using interventions that are proportionate, evidence-based, and ethically justified.

74. What should you do if you do not know the answer to a healthcare MMI question?

Do not bluff. Acknowledge what you know, identify what you would need to learn, explain how you would find reliable information, and continue reasoning from established ethical principles.

75. What is the most important thing to demonstrate in a healthcare-current-events MMI?

Do not simply recite facts. Show that you can identify the problem, recognize competing perspectives, consider patient autonomy and safety, understand broader system effects, acknowledge uncertainty, and reach a thoughtful physician-level approach.