(Snippets from the frontline)
To protect and to serve
Keeping a medical practice afloat is not easy as every day there is more paperwork and hoops to jump through. Many new physicians join groups and wash their hands of day-to-day financial decision-making.
The compromise is a work contract predicated on business incentives that may undermine the moral and ethics characterized in the Hippocratic Oath. Violation of the contract may jeopardize personal repayment of medical school loans, house and car payments, or children college funds. As many doctors get locked-in, they abandon their voice for patient advocacy as well as alter decision-making learned during intense training.
Some doctor groups like radiologists, pathologist, anesthesiologists, and emergency room physicians are reliant on contracts that can be dangled by hospital administrators if certain economic (and even political) criteria are not met. Horror stories of manipulations and coercion are plentiful, but kept secret by the silenced physician community.
Medical professionals have been taken over by business, so there are few doctors who have a voice. Journalists and the public should seek input from physicians who are not fearful of losing a contract, and possess character to protect the patients they serve.
Gene Uzawa Dorio, M.D.
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