Steppin' Out

Revolutions come in all sizes: large and small. 

For years I have written about the travesties of the American medical system.  So many posts have focused on the atrocities of healthcare reform.  Yet year after year, I follow the lead of my fellow physicians.  I put my head down and work.  I deliver the best I have to offer even as the paperwork, frustrations, and threats rise.

Physicians are a tired and humble group.  We are meek.  We have been slayed by our own oaths to a population of patients who in reality we harm.  We harm them as we speed up the treadmill to cover overhead.  We harm them as we watch our hospitals bend to the slavery imposed by clunky and dangerous electronic medical records.  We shake our heads in disgust because we feel powerless to effect change.  We break the contract we signed in blood as we blindly follow the herd over the cliff

We are not powerless.

Somehow we were hoodwinked into believing that administrators, technologists, and governments deliver healthcare.  They do not...we do.  There is a knowledge gap.  Those who have the skills have allowed themselves to be cowed by those who don't.  We are disorganized, our representative bodies are impotent, and we have been painted as criminals to a society that suffers under the current economic realities. 

I have made the decision that enough is enough.  I must think globally, yet act locally.  The only thing I have left is my unique ability to care for patients.  The art of caring for the elderly is quickly fading.  Medical residents become hospitalists or specialists.  Hospice and palliative care physicians are being trained at a glacial pace.

There will no longer be anyone to manage our most fragile, at risk patients.

And beginning one year from now, the great exodus will include me.  I've given notice to my practice.

I'm steppin' out of this broken system. 

Want to know what happens next?

Stay tuned.