Who Owns Your Doctor?

This Blog Site is dedicated to the truth about what is happening in health care in America today. Look around on the Internet, and you can find all kinds of information about Hospitals and Doctors. Insurance companies have even hired companies like Zagat, to tell you who the best doctors are, and who runs the best practices, and why. Has it come to this? Would you pick your doctor like you would pick your hotel or restaurant?

What really matters in choosing a doctor anyway? I have asked this of my patients over the years, and I have come up with some very consistent answers. Patients want a doctor who is kind, caring, honest and competent. They also want a doctor who is available when they need him, or can at least get them seen by a colleague in time of need. Lastly, they want to know that their doctor is working for them, and looking after their needs as a patient first.

Let's think about what it means for a doctor to be working for his patients. I would like to define that more specifically. What does that really mean? Did you ever ask yourself, "who does my doctor work for?" How do you even define what it means to work for someone, or some organization?

It has been said that, "your boss is the one that can fire you." As a patient, you can certainly fire your doctor, no questions asked. Now if you have an established relationship, your doctor cannot fire you, without making certain accommodations to transfer your care to another doctor. In that respect the patient is the boss in this relationship.

Now if you fire your doctor, as one patient, it probably isn't going to have a great impact on his career. He won't have to sell the house and move his family to a new city and start a new job and all of that. The true boss for that doctor is the guy that can tell him he has to move his practice elsewhere, at great expense of time, money, and energy. Not to mention aggravation on the part of himself, and his family.

So when you think this all through, your doctor's real boss isn't you, the patient, it is whomever can fire him. So if it comes down to decisions about the running of a practice, and expenses and overhead, and profits, and making that practice viable as an ongoing economic concern, who do you think is going to have the greatest influence over the decision making, the patient, or the the guy that can fire your doctor?

Now in light of this new line of thinking, does it matter to you that your doctor might be worried about losing his job if he decides to recommend the more expensive treatment, or he wants to keep you in the hospital an extra night? It should, because that is exactly what is going on out there my friends. Doctors are selling out left and right, to insurance companies, to hospitals, and to administrative types (some of whom used to be doctors) that are now calling the shots on your care, because the doctor that is treating you is wondering if he will get fired, for doing what is best for you.

How do you know if your doctor is a sell-out? I am going to tell you how in future discussions.