When the representative based institutions are exposed to those who seek to destroy them.

By Anonymous Guest Author

The governance of medical practice in the United States evolved over the last 100 years to contain several democratic institutions. When I say that I’m being purely apolitical with “democratic” by meaning everyone has a co-equal voice in decisions and the policies are supposed to provide value to the collective group somewhat equally or at least with proper hearing of all perspectives. To some extent, the comments on our physician web-pages and discussion boards reflect a belief that these institutions exist and SHOULD listen to us. I think as Americans we believe that the governing bodies are accountable to the constituents.

But what if the governing bodies are not listening to constituents and membership of such a board does not reflect the needs of the profession and its members.

What if new parties insist on membership to the leadership boards where there is shared governance with the sole intention to remove that shared governance from the hands of physicians.

Do we continue to pretend that we are being represented and that our voices matter?  Do we need to provide space to those who harbor the sole purpose to destroy our profession?

As I see the never ending attempts at title manipulation with so many “healthcare” professions attempting to use physician titles I recognize they are doing it to damage my profession. When I see effort to change terminology from “supervise” to “collaborate” I fully recognize it is to damage my profession. When I see governing boards of medicine or subspecialties admit non-physicians to their leadership when no co-equal representation or control of their own boards is granted to physicians I see the damage it inflicts on my profession. When I see price-gouging of physicians simply because they are “rich” and “can afford it” I see the damaging of my profession.

More recently when I see articles from academic medicine I see clear anti-physician bias. They favor non-physicians in almost every story under the false guise of “inclusion” when the reality it is based on institutional “profit.” Decisions have been widely made by large for-profit entities to remove physician-led care from the middle class for profit. Full stop. If anything, this has driven costs for patients UP.

Increasingly I believe that physicians need to find institutions that are pro-physician, abort memberships in anti-physician groups and from anti-physician governance structures. When a party tries to use title manipulation at institutions in order to deliberately confuse patients, they should lose clinical privileges immediately. We should remove non-physicians from the leadership of our medical boards, medical societies, and specialty societies. We should hold hospitals accountable and seek to repeal the ban on physician-ownership of hospitals (because obviously this is anti-competitive and a major cause of damage to our profession and the rise of monopolization in healthcare.)

Removing physician leadership through the guise of “inclusion” of bad actors has had only one outcome, removing the role physicians have in society as leaders in healthcare and subjugating physicians in anti-competitive markets by removing their negotiating power. It is important that all such pro-physician boards are protected and that the damage caused by including hostile voices is recognized and reversed.