When Hospitals become too Big, Doctors become Drone Employees

It is truly sad what has happened to the two major hospitals in the Treasure Valley, as it now appears that their commitment is to their bottom line and not the welfare of their patients.

In this issue of the Gem State Patriot, we have a letter from a Washington County Commissioner Kirk Chandler who tells of his terrible experience while being treated for Covid in St. Luke’s hospital. After reading his story, I had a hard time believing that one of our major hospitals could be treating a patient with such disdain but there it was in black and white.

The care and the service he received while in their facilities is beyond the pale. Granted, some of the lack of service was due to understaffing, which we have been talking about for the past year, but one has to fault the hospital administrators for the ineptness of keeping their facilities fully staffed. The fact that they required vaccinations for all their staff and contractors was a management error and caused many nurses to leave their employment.

Everyone is aware of the protocols imposed on these hospitals by the CDC/NIH, which has restricted them in which medications they can use and which procedures they can implement on Covid patients. While we may never know how many patients could have been saved by using therapeutics such as ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, much of the loss is because we no longer have personal physicians looking out for our health. Instead, we have public health officials setting the rules and telling care facilities like St. Luke’s and St. Al’s what they can and can’t use in the treatment of patients.

What ever happened to the doctor patient relationship?

There was a time, 15 to 20 years ago, where St. Luke’s and St. Al’s were offering some of the best care in the Treasure Valley, but I would venture to say after reading this letter and hearing stories from other friends that this is no longer the case. When physicians are under contract by a hospital, they are going to do whatever that hospital’s administration tells them to do when it comes to how they will treat patients. If the physician under contract doesn’t like what they are doing, it is just too bad, as most of their physicians are not only under contract but also have non-compete clauses in their contracts so they have no place else to go if they quit.

When these hospitals started their growing stage a couple decades ago, they went out procuring private clinics at a breakneck pace and paying exorbitant prices for them while locking their physicians into non-compete contracts. These consolidations seriously hurt competition, leaving patients with little choice as to where to go for medical care. These behemoths have doubled their cost structure by gobbling up most of the private clinics that proliferated the Treasure Valley.

They have turned into Mega Medical Monopolies which have sucked up just about every bit of talent we had at our disposal and relegated them to being employees instead of practicing physicians whose first priority is to the patient. Now their first priority is to the organization that has them under contract, pays their salaries, and gives them their marching orders. If you don’t have a personal physician, I would suggest that you look into getting one that works for you and not the hospital they practice in.

There has always been a personal relationship between doctor and patient, but now it appears that when you are admitted into one of these huge facilities, you are nothing more than another customer with an insurance or Medicare care card. Reading stories like Kirk’s should shake you to your very foundation in your trust of the medical establishment and make you think about what kind of Hippocratic Oath doctors take nowadays.

Maybe it is like the ever changing definition of a vaccine that the CDC/NIH comes out with when a different vaccine is developed and put on the market. I have always had the utmost respect for physicians throughout my life although I’m thankful that I can count the times I have seen one on both my hands. At 76 years of age, I try real hard to keep myself in good physical shape so I don’t have to see one of those dystopian hospital contracted doctors. I do however keep friendships with several private practice physicians as an insurance policy that I will not have to deal with the revolving door scenario for patients at most large hospitals today.

In the last few months, we have seen the State Medical Board go after several doctors in our state because they were unhappy with the way they practiced medicine. What it really came down to is that these independent doctors like Dr. Ryan Cole were willing to tell it like it is and go against the grain of the public health medical establishment because they knew they could save lives. I think we all know that big government has never been the answer to our problems and is not how this country was founded.

When you allow State Medical Boards to dictate to a qualified physician what he can and can’t say, you infringe on his or her constitutional rights, and this is exactly what Idaho’s medical board is doing. They may have control over what he may prescribe for a patient in a hospital but they should not be able to control or threaten what a physician says outside of his practice. We have allowed the fear of this Covid virus to scare everyone into believing everything our public health officials have to say. The real question is are they actually looking out for the best interests of the people?

We don’t think they are concerned with the people, especially when they restrict drugs that have been on the market for decades with little or no incidence of ill effects. Drugs like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine have been used for many years and have proven effective against many diseases. To inhibit the use of them because it would endanger the drug companies’ non liability position of their EUA drugs is nothing short of criminal, and I believe that the NIH/CDC need to be held accountable for the lives that have been lost because of their edicts on hospital protocols.

We need to change how medical boards are appointed from a political appointment to a board that is elected by the independent physicians in our community, not ones appointed by a governor. Physicians should be able to police themselves and have a board made up of independent physicians who are their peers and have no allegiances to a hospital or other organization like the IMA. We also need to get the politicians out of the business of public policies on medical decisions along with the supposedly enlightened public health officials and turn public policy over to an independent board of physicians who are actually dealing with patients every day.

What Mr. Chandler’s letter didn’t talk about was the fact that his relatives were sneaking in cocktails with ingredients in them that would get him well enough to get moved to another hospital where he would have more control over how he was treated. We are aware of other patients who had these types of cocktails brought in to them by relatives. We are sure that there are more stories like Kirk Chandler’s, and we are hoping that more patients will come forward and relate some of the harrowing experiences they had to deal with had while under the care of our major hospitals. These hospitals have turned their medical facilities into something no one had ever expected. They are now corporate entities even though they say they are “NON Profit” and the only thing that seems to matter is the bottom line and how much the administrators will be paid for growing it. It is Big Business and a Florence Nightingale is nowhere to be found in these Mega Medical Monopolies.

“There is nothing to fear but fear itself” … Except maybe your contracted attending physician at the hospital.