On Being a Heretic

Few people can imagine the frustration of constantly knowing you see and understand a social phenomenon “no one else” comprehends. I believe I see and understand the dual professional dilemmas, medical malpractice and medical peer review, far better than any other person in America.

Furthermore, I believe almost everything heard or read regarding those subjects is based upon flawed fundamentals and distorted logic. More importantly, very little of my belief is based upon “my opinion”, which, like a Star Bucks latte and $5.00 will get you a small (grande in their language) and some change.

The vast majority of that understanding of medical malpractice and medical peer review is based upon facts taken from the medical profession’s own literature and other related sources.

How might a lone heretic overcome the concentrated public relations, media savvy might of Organized Medicine and federal and state bureaucracy? Only through a discerning public. Discernment demands that the listener differentiate between fact and rhetoric.

Organized Medicine (AMA, Joint Commission, AHA, etc., etc.) and non-medical profession sources can literally engulf an interested audience with mountains of literature, past, present and to be created.

Few people are old enough to remember Dragnet’s Sergeant Friday, “The facts, madam, just give me the facts.”

Organized Medicine’s defense of their past track record regarding the administration of their profession will be “a day late and a dollar short” if only documented facts are accepted in rendering a judgment.

The problem occurs because the “facts” regarding each subject (malpractice and medical peer review) get lost in the fact-less rhetoric. Discernment between fact and rhetoric requires time and effort, two commodities most of the public and few in the media offer either medical malpractice or medical peer review.

The public must choose if they want to continue just talking about healthcare change or do they finally want to begin making healthcare change happen?

I recently had a person at the highest level of business leadership ask me, “But, what can I do?” If a person at the highest level of business leadership can ask, ‘But, what can I do?’, where does that leave everyone else?

Is it any wonder that we’ve spent the last 20 years just “talking” about the need for healthcare change? That need is so obvious, but the ability to direct meaningful healthcare change has been missing. And it is also obvious that Organized Medicine will never be one of the guiding forces for such change.

I can direct interested parties toward positive healthcare change – NOW! A “desire” for healthcare change merely offers more of the same.

Get involved if you truly want healthcare change. The public needs to “look back in anger” and say “Enough talk, lets do something positive.”