Dr. Ghost

I found this article is so naive and cute. The author seems amazed that when a doctor leaves a hospital system the staff will NOT tell a patient where they went. The doctor just vanishes and the patients feel ghosted by it.

This is called punishment and not ghosting. This is what hospitals do. This is what big medical practices do.

Contracts with so-called restrictive covenants are now common in medicine, although some states limit their use. Noncompete clauses — common in many commercial sectors — aim to stop physicians or other health care professionals from taking patients with them if they move to a competing practice nearby or start their own. But what may be good for business is bad for patient care — and certainly disquieting for those whose doctors simply disappear.

It’s a good read. I do understand the business side of this. What if I had a partner and helped her get up and going and then she decided to open up right next door? That could kill me. But for large hospital systems? C’mon. They don’t own the patients and to have staff pretend not to know where the doctor went is just gross.

Ed Brown, the clinic’s CEO, said the noncompete agreements are not just about business but also help ensure that the Iowa Clinic can provide reliable services.

“Noncompetes are good for the patients because they help to provide stability within a practice and ensure continuity of care,” Brown said recently in an email. Further, he added, noncompetes protect physicians by ensuring that other physicians in the practice are committed to the same agreement and can’t abandon it without proper notice.

I love the smell of administrator bullshit in the morning. So refreshing.

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