Hospitals Buying Practices (And Doctors) En Masse: A Disturbing Trend Of My Younger Days Returns

Authors' Note:  As I contemplate  yesterday's "fun" over at the Courier Tribune, I've been compelled to update & modify this post. 

A year out of residency, I took my job with Randolph Medical Associates in Asheboro in 1995 . . . at about the time that hospitals everywhere were buying up practices . . . promising "hassle-free" environments where the doctor could just practice medicine.

As a girl with ADD, who went into Pediatrics for the sheer love of being the stopper in the drain . . . and making a real difference in children's lives, the notion was very appealing. 

Young, idealistic (and clearly stupid to trust the slimeballs running Randolph Hospital), I was coming home to a place and people I loved in order to make things better for kids.

Alas, it became a nightmare.  And in twelve years, I haven't really woken up.  Because NOTHING in our system of medico-legal oversight works as it should.

As this article today in the Raleigh News & Observer explains, the aforementioned trend fizzled out as hospitals and the suits who ran them got WAY too heavy-handed, autocratic and down-right professionally vicious with their employed MD's (insert the sad, on-going saga of Dr. Mary Johnson in her hometown of Asheboro).  Many partnerships and "cooperative relationships" dissolved (oftentimes disastrously) and physicians went back to running their own shows.

I vividly remember one group of Pediatricians in the Charlotte area putting up billboards with their faces on milk cartons . . . advertising their move 20 minutes up the road (after breaking off from one such autocratic mega-system) . . . just out-of-legal-reach of a "no-compete" agreement.

I loved the dark humor . . . even as I covered their deserted, bleeding practice for the evil autocrats.

Incredibly, as really HORRIBLE things happened to doctors and their practices, the local newspapers (even those professing to be "progressive" and cutting-edge) remained largely deaf, dumb and mute . . . mostly because they were obliged to smooth the way over for their larger advertisers (i.e. the hospitals).

And an oblivious public . . . that in this era of "reform" constantly wails and moans about poor access to physicians and high costs . . . DID NOT CARE.  Doctors are evil and greedy (and the good ones are a "dime-a-dozen") dontcha know.  Obama says so.  It must be true.

Witness my five years, going on six, in the blogosphere . . . being called every name in the book because I won't just roll over and die for Asheboro's $700,000/year man . . . so he can parachute in peace to the home he drove me out of.

Oh no.  In Greensboro (aka, "the big city"), fed-up citizens might march on City Hall, but down in Asheboro, we cannot criticize poor Bob . . . or his slithering sidekick, Steve Eblin . . . or the City Council & mill-town "honorables" that propped Bob up with our tax dollars and fed his massive ego (and bank account) . . . or "fantastic" local "reporters" like Chip Womick who smirked and snuggled up to the powers-that-be like some Russian whore.

Someone like Jeff Martin or Clark Bell or Beth Smith might call us "crazy" or "stupid".

These days, as medical duties become more and more specialized & fractured (for instance, I now make my living as an independently-contracted Pediatric hospitalist - and have not set foot in an office in nearly two years) . . . as a recession lingers . . . and as reimbursements to physicians (particularly in primary care) continue to be cut by a government that cannot seem to say no to the freebies . . . the trend of hospitals buying up everything/everyone in sight is returning.

For those of us who have been there and done that . . . and know that Obamacare did not reform any of the things that really need reforming, it is very Orwellian and ominous.

(I miss the office.  I miss the relationships with parents and watching children grow.  I miss close relationships with colleagues I trust.  But I know now that being an Independent Contractor is as close as I am going to get to professional autonomy and re-mastering my own destiny.  It's pretty sad.  But one must march on and make the best of the hand one is dealt.)

I did appreciate this comment . . . from UNC Healthcare System CEO, Bill Roper: 

"The winning organizations will be the ones that understand how to work carefully and effectively with doctors," Roper said. "Those that try to be dictatorial and autocratic won't be successful.

I just wish that North Carolina hospital CEO's like Mr. Roper would do a whole lot more to denounce bad behavior in their own ranks and weed out bad apples.

Let's be very clear that this Pediatrician-badly-burned-in-public-service thinks that two local "non-profit" executives who lied, and cheated and stole their way through two lawsuits in order to keep the Pediatric "business" in Asheboro under their control are VERY BAD APPLES . . . and that their little experiement in medical-nation-building in Asheboro has FAILED.

The word is out on this "team".  Newbies Google, and know to STAY AWAY from Asheboro.  Because this town eats its young professionals and spits them out.

Moreover, I'm still in this blogosphere because PERJURY IS A FELONY without a statute of limitations.  And Dr. Mary Johnson is SO NOT GOING AWAY until these two over-rated, overpaid jerk-wads are held accountable for their morally-bankrupt deeds. 

Indeed, it is my now goal to be a PR nightmare for ALL of the economic development gurus & community leaders & politicians & professional "advocates" and sanctimonious/partisan "citizen journalists" who closed ranks against the inconvenient truth and determinedly looked the other way while I was professionally stomped and spat upon FOR DOING MY JOB ACCORDING TO THE DICTATES OF MY OATH.

Call me "crazy", but far as I am concerned, Bob Morrison and Steven Eblin are dead weight around Asheboro's neck, and it's time for the right honorables to cut them loose and let them fall.

"Conspiracy theorist"?  YOU BETCHA.  But in Asheboro, I'm pretty sure it's called the Rotary Club.

I dropped a comment on the N&O thread.  Since what happened to me in the good ole hometown couldn't be MORE RELEVANT to the topic at hand, I don't hold back any more:

"Physicians have a deep aversion to being jerked around by a corporation".

Yeah, and it would be REAL NICE if the state of North Carolina would do more to reign in bad apples on the administrative side of the equation . . . and do something - anything - to better oversee "non-profits" and protect medical whistle-blowers.

The North Carolina Attorney General could start that trend by investigating what two hospital executives in Asheboro did to a Pediatrician in public service . . . and PROSECUTING THEM FOR THEIR CRIMES.

After getting fired for saving a baby's life, and SLAPP-sued and then swinddled by perjury/contempt/fraud, I've been stone-walled by a suck-up DA for SEVEN YEARS.

Good Pediatricians are "a dime a dozen" to these two clowns - while the CEO paid himself over $700,000 in salary and deferred benefits in the 2008-2009 physical year - even as he proactively fired "lesser staff" to meet budget concerns. It's INSANE!!!

It would be nice if our newspapers would wake up and report this stuff.

I know.  Move on along.  Get over it.  

Let medicine keep going to hell without saying a word.

Sorry.  I'm afraid I have a conscience.  And a soul.

And (Bob, Steve) they were NEVER for sale.