Revival of the Private Practice

WARNING: The private practice doctor-patient relationship is an endangered species. You and I have an invigorating opportunity to maximize and strengthen this relationship to preserve and improve the economics, the ethics, and the healing efficiency of our California medical system and to be a model for the rest of the nation. YOU have a purpose, and your input and involvement will make all the difference, so please lend a hand.

My prescription for this dangerous diagnosis? Start up a serious, heartfelt and sincere conversation about what’s wrong, identify the weak parts, get ALL hands-on deck, get fired up, cheer up, and make this bond stronger than ever. We can do this!

As a good (Good meaning upholding the work ethic and  the traditional proper standard of care of the profession) general surgeon in Sacramento for about two decades between 1985 and 2004, I was blessed just about every day of my fantastic career, and I thank God for that amazing opportunity. I left surgery prematurely because I wasn’t satisfied with the way the business was going and entered another vocation and have been at it ever since. That career is as a Sacramento landlord, and as you might imagine, considering your own career, I have become increasingly dissatisfied with this “progressively” changing business environment as well, based on interference of commerce by local, state, and federal government bureaucracy, more restrictions, more regulations, and higher taxes, day by day!  

Surprisingly, that same spirit of providing good care for patients transferred over to providing good care for our multi-unit apartment complex tenants, until it didn’t.  When people have a sincere need for something like normal and good health, or a roof over their head and the quiet enjoyment of their apartment unit, there is no higher calling than providing the proper care and satisfying the patients’ or the tenants’ needs. And there is no higher reward than seeing those needs met, watching folks get back into life so they can excel and succeed and peacefully rest at home while not at work, just like it happened to me in my earlier life. At the same time, it is easy to recognize the thanks returned to me by these individuals helped. The common goal is common sense.  

The priceless magic in that daily blessing described above is the bond established between the doctor and the patient, because it is friendship and trust, and an admiration for the other participant in the relationship. As time went on, I found that the more mature I became through my career, admiration became brotherly love, and that’s a tight bond! Call it goodwill and well-being. Goodwill gives rise to well-being, and well-being gives rise to the common good. Good motives and treatment provide wellness. And goodwill among the participants in a business arrangement brings about well-being to both.  

Here are some examples:

1. As stated above, the doctor treats and brings about the well-being of the patient.
2. The plumber fixes the pipes and brings about the well-being of the homeowner.
3. The baker brings about the well-being of the donut enthusiast.
4. The banker brings about the well-being of the borrower, example for a home loan.
5. The policeman brings about the well-being of the assaulted citizen.
6. The editor brings about the well-being of the news seeker. 

In all these cases, the producers of goods and services are rewarded for doing a great job, otherwise they wouldn’t work. That reward is emotional, Spiritual (ethical), financial, safe, and satisfying for all involved. It is a first-class system!

America is a unique country in the world based on free enterprise. All businesses in a private practice system of goodwill and well-being are made up of people who are free to choose the business they wish to earn a living from, free to determine how much money they want to earn, free to choose how hard they want to work, free to choose where they want to live, and free to be competitive by charging what the market will bear yet keeping the cost of goods and services down enough to be profitable. When the government becomes a poisonous “player” in business, goodwill, well-being, motivation, and initiative fly out the window and complications, confusion, corruption, chaos, and complete collapse result. 

In a prior paper I wrote at California Globe, called “Medi-Cal and its Deleterious Impact on California Medical Care: The Cure,” I defined human health as a combination of five components. They are physical, emotional, Spiritual, financial, and civic health. All five must be optimal and in a state of homeostasis for the person to enjoy “whole” health. If any of these components of health are weak, the others will be negatively influenced as well. It is wise to maintain optimal health in all five. It might be good to do a little self-assessment to see how healthy you are. 

The health of a society is only as good as the people who make it up. If people involved in commerce are not stressed out by government interference, goodwill, well-being and the common good are for the most part protected and we have a strong, ethical, efficient and greatly thriving economy. Occasionally, however, there is an unresolvable dispute in this optimal system, and thus we call on the government to settle the dispute.  

A tame government has very limited responsibilities in a free market system, some of which are to protect our private property from domestic invasion (crime), to protect our borders from foreign invasion (communism), and to keep the national economy in balance. We ask, how is our government doing at the tasks they are sworn to and supposed to be carrying out, the same as a physician swears to uphold the covenants of the Hippocratic Oath? Not so good in my view. It would be optimal for us to stoutly define for our government the limitations we demand upon them, because they are way out of line. We need to discipline and change our government! The government is not supposed to be sovereign over the people.  The people are supposed to be sovereign over the government.  

For an example of a doctor with a good attitude, doing the job loves to do, look at the following quick story of a New York heart surgeon giving his all at his craft:                                                              

Doc halts surgery to give blood to young patient

This is the type of enthusiasm that the doctor-patient relationship promotes when the doctor and patient are allowed to conduct business without too much government. And that is the attitude that any doctor who went into business to help patients without bureaucracy hovering over them would gladly have. It’s all about the rewards, which are trust, brotherly love, favor, and proper compensation for a job well done. It makes everything easy.