Activism and Dialogue
Welcome. Many of you have come to this site because your local paper put out an Associated Press article about me. I want to thank them and writer David Sharp for his great piece. I never had thought of myself as an activist before but WTF, let’s do this.
I am a family doc in Maine. I have a lot of people under my care who seem to trust me. I am honored by that. Being a grunt in the trenches of medicine has given me the “on the ground” perspective that the morons who think they are running the healthcare system do not have. Those same puppet masters also have the annoying habit of ignoring what we have to say in favor of any new and unproven fad.
I am one of hundreds of thousands of primary care physicians who just want to treat patients but are being held back from doing our objectives by bureaucratic drag. It is destroying a very noble profession and thinning our ranks very quickly. Medical students are shying away from being family doctors because we get paid less and because we are losing our autonomy. How sad is that?
This website, www.authenticmedicine.com, will focusing on showing you the grunt’s perspective. Science and technology are good and needed but the art of medicine is just as important. I want to create a constant dialogue so that both points of view are considered and heard. You will find opinion pieces, blogs, medical pearls, videos and humor sections that are constantly being updated here. Keep checking back as we work hard to give a little (or a lot) push back where it is needed. Who knows, maybe we can turn this flicker into a flame and motivate a new generation of medical students to be the “authentic doctors” they envisioned themselves to be when they applied to medical school?
Nice article, on you, Doug, and a big thank you for taking the time to do what you do. I hope the AP sent it to other newspapers across the country to get the word out (not JUST because I’m mentioned, but what the heck…) I guarantee that the vast majority of our colleagues are of a like mind– actually, probably all of them who aren’t higher-ups in the AMA or in the Obama administration. There are a lot of us who are aware of what you do and appreciate your common sense approach and advocacy for us AND (a big “AND”) our patients. Let’s face it– all this “MU,ACO,PPC,PCMO,PPP” is meaningless “CRAP” when it comes down to patient care. We are stuck in this bureaucratic quagmire that only gets deeper as the administrators and their minions multiply and further complicate things in order to justify their existence. Sheesh. I shoulda been a tree surgeon.
P.S. I thought the Knee Saver woulda put you on Easy Street by now! Thanks for hanging around.
John Difini
Thanks for the article quotes, my man! No, Knee Saver did help but not enough. All your points are right on!
Dr. Doug,
Terrific article about you and your work. As a long-time Placebo Journal subscriber, I truly miss it, but I understand its demise.
What I do not understand, though, is how your desk looks so neat? Please explain. ; )
Please continue this blog, I really enjoy it!
Shhhhh…..I had to clean it up before the shoot. The stuff is on the floor! Thanks for the nice thoughts!
Doug
I wish we had known about you earlier, as commrades galore in the substance abuse and mental health field are feeling the same pain, as it were. You go, guy! Any able 8th grader with a tx plan manual and reasonable verbal skills could meet the criteria for most of what insurance companies want from providers. Add in a competent paralegal and we could have low cost medicine without all those pesky md’s, rn’s, phd’s, ma’s and such, ruining things for corporate america.