I’m getting to the point where I think it might be time to stop or at least decelerate the pace of my writing on medicine. When I retired from medical practice almost a year ago there were a lot of pent up experiences that I felt a need write about. But now I have already written about almost everything that I wanted to and, as I am no longer a practicing physician, I lack the ongoing experiences and frustrations of day-to-day medical practice to replenish the store. Moreover I am having a growing sense of futility when writing about medicine. Can writing about medicine change medicine for the better? Is anyone listening to physicians’ voices? Or are we all just grumbling to each other?
How many posts bashing electronic health record (EHR) systems does one need to read (or write)? I’m certainly not the only one writing on this topic. Criticism of EHR systems is very popular amongst physician bloggers nowadays. I hope someday the shear quantity (and quality) of these posts reaches a critical mass that results in the EHR companies paying attention and making some changes to their products — but I’m not holding my breath. Similarly a large number of physicians rail against the current maintenance of certification (MOC) process, yet I see no indications that anyone who can change MOC is listening. The negative effect of the Great Hospital Buy-Out of Physicians of the last decade is also a favorite topic, as are increasing regulations, the hegemony of insurance companies, and countless other annoyances, but what is the use of grousing about all this if no one is listening but our fellow physicians?
Despite voicing our concerns online, we physicians don’t seem to have a voice where it counts: politically. We don’t have effective representation. Societies that are supposed to represent physicians such as the Heart Rhythm Society, the American Heart Association or the American Medical Association are beholden to groups other than physicians, i.e., drug and device companies — the same drugs and devices that they publish supposedly objective guidelines about. These medical societies also are in bed with the American Board of Internal Medicine, the progenitors of endless board recertification and MOC, and indeed have a nice side-business going on providing expensive board-review courses to prepare for these tests. Corporate funding of these societies ranges from 20 to 50 percent of their total revenue.
Go to any big national meeting of these societies and wander through the acres of exhibits. Some of the exhibit booths are bigger than the home in Philadelphia that I spent my first years in. These glittery exhibit halls reek of money. Every time the pharmaceutical companies complain that they have to charge so much for their drugs because of the cost of R & D, I recall these lavish exhibits as well as the constant TV commercials for erectile dysfunction products and drugs for quasi-diseases like short eyelashes. It makes me sick! (Ah! New syndrome: TV drug commercialosis!) Money is power in politics, and physicians, despite being perceived as rich and even overpaid by the general public, are low down on the money totem pole compared to other facets of the health care system.
I’m not trying to be pessimistic, just realistic. Yet if writing is the only weapon we have, what choice do we have but to continue to use it, blunt instrument though it may be? The growing multitude of physician-bloggers and physician-commenters will continue to write, will continue to fight for changes in EHR systems, recertification requirements, and health care policies. Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone holding the purse strings will be swayed and do something to make the lives of physicians better. Possibly the decision-makers will come to realize that if our lives are better, our patients’ lives will be too. That’s important because everyone, whether politician, hospital administrator or EHR corporation CEO, will sooner or later be a patient in need of a good doctor.
David Mann is a retired cardiac electrophysiologist and blogs at EP Studios.
