Imagine for a second that your a doctor. Years and years of study followed by an accomplished career of healing at a clinic you helped establish. You've got a nice house in the suburbs, x amount of kids in the yard and a loving husband/wife to come home to every night. Life couldn't be better.
Than a year ago a corporate entity bought the clinic you have helped run for years. The new administration calls a meeting and demands the doctors to start prescribing only certain types of medications. "In the interest of keeping our clinic open." your told as a major pharmaceutical company is part of the ownership group now in control of the clinic. Your treatments are reviewed on a weekly basis by an accountant in another state. Your issued a report per month listing the total costs of the treatments and medications you prescribed to your patients. Your also given a list of alternative treatments and medications offered for you to start using. You know these alternatives are no where near as effective as the one's your used to prescribing but times are changing and costs matter more now than ever before.
Then earlier this week you were called in for a meeting. Everyone in the room wore a suit and had a briefcase while you showed up in scrubs, a white lab coat and a stethoscope. Your informed by the people in suits with the briefcases that your contract with the clinic you helped establish will not be renewed. Your to clean out your office by the Friday of the next week. When you ask why your told you didn't follow the set procedure for patient care. You argue you were doing what was in the best interest of the patient but your words fall on deaf ears.
Your now a doctor of 25 years out of a job. This isn't a dream, this is reality.
9 comments:
I think I would sue the bastards for conributing to the destruction of my lifestyle and my right to earn a living, as well as the detriment of those patients I am supposed to care for... and, I would try and enlist those same patients to join me int he lawsuit.
UGH.
Big business SUCKS.
This makes me sick, corporate assholes letting go of a doctor who is just upholding his oath. Seriously, this stuff makes me want to just hit something, and I'm not a violent person!
the whole system is fucked...
this.sucks.
It's unfair, but not unbelievable. The days when doctors and nurses were allowed to do their job, i.e. caring for patients, is long gone. It's all about costs and targets.
Medicine is about money now, not making people better. What a world we live in, huh?
I work for doctors who either are let go or are asked to leave for many different reasons.
One thing I know about doctors-they're like cats...when dropped they land on their feet.
As sorry as I am to hear that doctor was let go because it's admin. is running it's office like corporate america, I'm sure he/she will be just fine. But it doesn't change the fact that patient care is not first wherever this took place.
Don't even get me started. I see the health care system fall short all the time at Texas Children's Hospital. Don't get me wrong, they go out of their way and there is a lot of love in that building as the kids get the absolute best care. But seeing what the parents have to go through some times with all the administrative bull shit sends me spinning. Parents have far more important things to worry about when a child is ill.
it is capitalism. the dollar is the bottom line.
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