Doctor’s Diary January 25, 2019: Your doctor advocate is under attack

(Snippets from the frontline)

Your doctor advocate is under attack

When you are ill in the hospital, you must have someone who will be your advocate.  Until recently, your doctor was one of them.

Some frontline physicians are under attack because they are whistleblowers who recognize poor medical care being rendered to their patients. 

I know over a handful of doctors who have been dismissed by hospitals through sham peer review and false accusations, resulting in concomitant stress and closure of their practice.   This devious tactic and continual threat contributes to the rapidly rising burnout and suicide rate for physicians.

Detrimental to the public welfare has been financial control of doctor decision-making by hospitals dangling contracts if certain performance measures are not met.  In that effort, physicians are asked to provide unworthy cut-rate service, and should they complain, the attack starts.

Doctors are under pressure to acquiesce to profiteering subterfuge from hospital administrators resulting in one reason healthcare in the US is worsening compared to other countries.

Lost is not only an advocate, but also the moral and ethical safety net underlying quality medical care when these attacks result in dismissal of whistleblowing doctors.

The public should care about those who care for them.

Gene Uzawa Dorio, M.D.

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