Sometimes I wonder if we value our physicians, or if we think of them as just another problem? As I take a closer look inside the healthcare industry, it seems to me that the number of people with clipboards has grown outrageously – people who have a lot of control over physicians’ lives and are trained in business management but unskilled in the art of medical practice.

Many competent clinicians are suffering at the hands of administrators, who themselves, are overwhelmed by the state and federal legislative bodies. In several instances, the problems begin from patient complaints and customer satisfaction issues. The retail America concept does not easily apply to medical America.

In the healthcare world, patients are often unreasonable and have inappropriate expectations. The problem begins when the physician is considered the root cause. It is disheartening to see the clip-boarded staff trying to make excuses for the drunk, addicted or simply rude people who bring the healthcare delivery center to a halt, and make life even more unpleasant, for the other ill people. These patients never pay anything to the hospital or clinic. They just have one viewpoint and shifting from it is impossible, unless the entire industry takes a shift.

Such scenarios make me wonder whether healthcare delivery centers need more  security cameras or even a security officer, possibly with a weapon.

In addition to being considered problematic, physicians are also viewed with significant suspicion. There is a huge amount of oversight and regulation in the industry. Hospitals have multiple employees, committees, monitoring officers to track credentials, complaints and compliance issues with regulatory authorities. Everything is being monitored from the time when a patient is seen, to the time when he/she walks out e.g. the time taken to get a CT scan done and other tests. These are the people which are constantly keeping checks on physicians and scrutinizing them. This may be a requirement by the folks over at CMS, but it does not mean hospitals and administrators should not make compliance as easy as possible. It certainly does not mean the physicians cannot be vocal about the difficulty of these measures.

Physicians are competent people who have been through medical schools, residency and specialty boards. They go through background checks, state licenses, state and federal narcotics permits, etc. When they apply to new hospitals, they need references and more background checks. They need to demonstrate that they have been continuously employed and are questioned about any lawsuit they might have faced years ago.

Physicians spend their days, evenings and nights treating the poor and destitute, the inebriated, the addicts and the chronically ill. They work on holidays and weekends – just to ensure their patients and managers are satisfied.

I believe that it must be demoralizing for the physicians to be under all sorts of scrutiny by any number of organizations. They receive more oversight than an average criminal. All they do, is care for suffering patients.

As the regulation driven America transforms, there are going to be various regulatory issues: documentation, physicians, nurses, patient satisfaction, reimbursements and what not. I understand that there are rules and regulations, and someone has to implement them. But at the moment, they just seem a bit too cumbersome for physicians. All our physicians need is help and support rather than increased mistrust and oversight. There may be certain exceptions, but mostly, they are good people, and need to be valued as such.