MD Whistleblower

I’m writing this aboard a United Airlines flight on route to Chicago.  I haven’t had this much leg room since I was inside my mother’s womb.   I am now in fear that if the gentleman in front of me reclines his seat, that it will disfigure me.  If this occurs, I wonder if United would be liable for my pain and suffering.   Now that I think about, throw that seat back, buddy! Stretch out and relax! I shouldn’t carp on United as I received an unexpected prize from the airline.  When I passed through the TSA checkpoint, I was told that I had been awarded a Pre-Check status, which conferred valuable privileges.  This meant that I did not have to remove my shoes or my jacket.  Somehow, the airline had determined that the Whistleblower posed no flight risk.  Luckily, the airline had not read some of my scathing Whistleblower posts on their pricing strategy and their deep commitment to customer service. Do you think that they prof...

I’m a physician and I’m against wellness.  Let me explain. Wellness is the new health mantra that has much more to do with marketing than with evidence-based medicine.  Wellness institutions and practitioners are omnipresent promising benefits that are often untested or rejected scientifically.   Hospitals that years ago would have shunned new age healing arts, now offer yoga, meditation, Reiki and massotherapy.  Do they do so because they have had a Damascus Road experience and now believe that these techniques are effective?  Guess again. Ahead of His Wellness Time? 100 Years Ago Metchnikoff Suggests Probiotics  Wellness is no longer restricted to medical campuses, costly weekend retreats for emotional and physical catharses and ubiquitous yoga storefronts.  Wellness is now championed by corporate America.   Business leaders argue that keeping employees well is not only a demonstration of good corporate citizenship, bu...

Folks who have wandered through the Legal Quality category of this blog understand my views on our perverted and unfair medical malpractice system.  I've been in the arena many times, and always walked away unharmed.   If this system were presented in front of a fair minded and impartial jury, it would be dismantled.  Sure, there are positive elements present, but they are dwarfed and suffocated by the drawbacks. The self-serving arguments supporting the current system are far outweighed by the financial and emotional costs that innocent physicians unfairly bear.  Tort reform should not be controversial.  You may wish to peruse a few of my medical malpractice posts before spewing forth vitriol in the comments section. Beyond the medical arena, who wants to defend the crushing volume of litigation in the United States?   Let me be bold.  I think we have too much litigation and fear of litigation in this country.  Put that i...

To those brave souls who have returned after digesting last week’s cheerleading on hospitalists, here is the Achilles’s heel of the system.  While the advantages are clear and substantial, there are serious vulnerabilities which have not yet been adequately remedied.  Achilles Held by the Heel Being Dipped into the River Styx Hospitalists cannot appreciate the medical nuances, personality, family dynamics, life events and prior experiences that may be well known by the out-patient physician.    There are serious communication lapses, all of which cannot be bridged.  The out-patient doc may know that the patient’s chest pain is his typical anxiety and that it is not necessary to repeat the cardiac evaluation that was done 2 years ago.  The hospitalist may take a different tack here.  Despite their best efforts, hospitalists know that they will not be seeing the patients after discharge.  As they are not permanently vested,  they ...