(Snippets from the frontline)
Controlling the media
He is a Vietnam veteran; the first in his family to graduate high school and go to college; and the first to become a doctor – a trauma surgeon. A national TV show depicted his efforts saving an LAPD officer after near-fatal gunshot wounds; and his upstanding life story was told in my local newspaper column.
Copies were placed in the hospital foyer, but this one was not. Asking hospital Public Relations why, they stated, “We don’t endorse doctors like him…nor those who support him.”
Thereafter, this explained why the newspaper stopped my column and told me the hospital threatened to cut advertisement affecting their revenue; why a local blogger was pressured by the hospital to halt postings; and newfound reluctance of nearby sites to publish articles.
Others though were fearless, and spread my writings through emails, Facebook, tweets, and blog sites around the community and beyond.
Hospitals want full control of the media and it doesn’t matter if one has surgical skills to save a life.
Their tactics ran into a roadblock though as the tools of the Internet and whistleblowers pushed back.
Money might talk, but freedom of speech prevails.
Gene Uzawa Dorio, M.D.
I’m sorry! I do not understand the comment by Dr. Butler.
Can someone explain?
We are all patients; one issue is MD+JD vs MBA+JD, as in administrators of some, certainly not all, nonprofit-hospitals’ suing indigent patients unable to pay their hospital-bills. Senator Charles Grassley cited such a hospital in Missouri, not his own state. Write to thank him. Dr. Karen Summar us on his Washington staff.
Teach patients and doctors to choose only ethical hospitals, beginning with our choice of medical school. Use the Internet: Everyone carries a smart phone. H