In an effort to continue to “not make a profit,” the Sisters of Mercy have descended like storm troopers on three more towns in Oklahoma: Ada, Noble and Tecumseh. I have always found it interesting that hospital administrators, just like the HMO peddlers, talk about “capturing patients.” Maybe this is their idea of transparency, as this is probably an indication about how the people once locked in this health care cage really feel. At the Surgery Center of Oklahoma we rely on our excellence in patient care to bring us business. The greedy “Sisters,” rather than embracing the discipline of competition prefer setting up outposts and traps all over the state to funnel the sick to their lair.
The “Sisters” have been cramming cash into their habits on the backs of the sick and now are taking full advantage of their ill-gotten purchasing power. The physicians that refuse to go along in these towns will be crushed and “shut out of the network.” The physicians that become the Vichy doctors I’ve written about before and go along with the program will very shortly wish they had sold their home and moved their practice and family to another town. These physicians, many family practitioners, pediatricians and internists, will be told under the usual strong-arm threats, that they are to refer to surgeons and other specialists whose skills and/or ethics they know are questionable. Patients that have been in these primary care physicians’ practices that have become friends will wonder why they are sent to a different surgeon to take out their gallbladder than the one they loved who fixed their hernia. After a few of the surgeries don’t go well, the primary care doctors will either become callous to their old friends and patients or they will leave this sick cartel.
Unfortunately, many patients will suffer unnecessarily while this unfolds. These heavy-handed top-down planning ventures always fail after a period of time, however. In the meantime, I offer my sincere condolences to the families of those victimized by this latest health care invasion.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
