I know a guy who is a family practitioner. He is a great guy. His patients worship him. He has fought the abusive hospital administrators that have tried to put him out of business from day one of his practice. They have threatened him with all they had: forming an insurance company and shutting him out…bringing other family practice doctors to town as hospital employees….you name it! Yet he has resisted. Slowly but surely, patients in his community realized that his practice was the one they wanted to be in. He was their doctor. He was their advocate. Period. He didn’t and hasn’t worked for a hospital…ever.
When his patients receive poor care in the hospital, he moves them to another floor of the hospital where the offending staff or nurse is removed from his patient. He has actually moved patients from one hospital to another hospital! He couldn’t do this if he was a tool. This advocacy is only possible because he is not a hospital employee.
I think I will tell him to paint his face blue when he goes to the hospital to make rounds. We could certainly benefit from more like him. Congratulations, my friend.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
