Divided Loyalty

I remember the hospital CEO sending out his email complaining that the hospital is low on admissions and that is was becoming a major problem.   This was about seven years ago.  I immediately “replied to all” asking why keeping patients healthy and out of the hospitals wasn’t a good thing?  Immediately he responded that this is NOT what he was saying at all (yeah, right) and then turned the whole conversation into some other “administralian” gobbledygook.  The fact is that a doctor employed by a hospital is and will always be an holy marriage.    Here is a nice editorial from Nate Hentoff of the Cato Institute which discusses this divided loyalty.   I love how he points out the utter bullshit spewed by the AMA in their statement:

“Patient welfare must always come first and not be overridden by the economic interests of hospitals that now employ doctors in ever-growing numbers.”

As if by making this decree the AMA absolves itself of any future problems?   “We told them that patients come first.  Didn’t they read our warning?”  Instead of trying to find ways for doctors to go independent and break free from the shackles of the hospital, they just wave their magic wand, cast a useless spell and move on.  Idiots.