Dr.J's HouseCalls

This blog began in 2005 - as the ONLY mechanism I had left to FIGHT what was done to me in government service (Hillary's village - a prelude to Obamacare) in my own hometown of Asheboro, North Carolina. Over 2200 posts later, the blog is currently being archived. The only posts you need to read right now are the few that are up. I AM A DOCTOR. I DID MY DUTY BY A PATIENT. BUT OUR LAWS DID NOT PROTECT ME. AND MY HOMETOWN/STATE/COUNTRY FAILED ME IN EVERY WAY THEY COULD FAIL.

A Public Service Pediatrician's Lament: Why I've STOPPED Blogging

As of January 2013, this blog is being archived for reference purposes. The Twitter feed has also been deactivated because there will be no more posts. And I've re-worked this sidebar a number of times trying to figure out what - and how much - I want to say about the decision to stop.

Because I've said it all before. Soundbites, short versions, long versions. I've spend fifteen years trying to get someone to play fair - and then to care that no one played fair. It's not happening.

And I've decided that, at least for right now, the only posts you need to read are the few that remain up on the homepage* - describing my experience as a former public service/"non-profit" physician - in my hometown of Asheboro, North Carolina.

That experience, from start to finish (and including my time in the blogosphere), is now all on the public record at the Randolph County Courthouse . . . Case # 12 CvS 2899.

Putting it ON-THE-RECORD was THE POINT of filing the action against Randolph County DA, Garland Yates, no matter what else happened.

Getting the case against Randolph Hospital to the NC Attorney General for the proper investigation that Randolph County "law enforcement" (I use the term very loosely) never saw fit to give it would have been gravy. But my friends and family and I always KNEW it wouldn't happen.

We weren't "right people". We don't dance with stars.

The "mission" I was recruited to was a lie. And legally, the fraud-upon-the-taxpayer has to stay buried. It's just too embarrassing . . . too ugly . . . not the image that Asheboro's powers-that-be want to present to the world.

I wanted something on the Court record to show people how the North Carolina "justice" system really works.

And it does NOT work for the law-abiding or the honest. It winks and nods at corruption draped in charity.

But maybe, just maybe, someday, down the road, someone else will have the resources and support to change how it works. Maybe they'll use my case as an example or reference point. Maybe what I've been through just trying to get back what was stolen . . . just to get back home . . . will keep some newbie doctor in public service . . . with principles and ideals and stars in their eyes . . . from getting professionally eviscerated - as I was.

Maybe someday, a candidate for District Attorney - or Sheriff - can use that record/this page to dethrone the Jabbas and good-ole-boys that currently occupy the space.

In the meantime, what I've done here, I can do on Facebook - amongst friends.

I'm giving up the blog because, as a physician who loves her work, and who loves taking care of sick children . . . I'm tired of having a target on my back . . . and being something for corporate medicine to stomp on.

Giving up blogging is like cutting off my arm, but I'm tired of living in fear that doing the right thing/the right way - or (God forbid) having an opinion (particularly a political one) - might get me fired - or black-balled-even-more-than-I-already-have-been.

When I took the Physician's Oath, I did NOT stop being a citizen . . . I did NOT give up my Constitutional rights. But somehow, in all reality, I did . . . at least if I want to keep working in the profession that I love anywhere near the home I fought so hard to keep and come back to.

At the risk of sounding like "Bones McCoy", I'm a doctor, NOT a punching bag . . . or an indentured servant . . . for the MBA's and lawyers to use, abuse and throw away like so much garbage.

Yet again, that's EXACTLY what I am, as a contracted or employed physician in North Carolina's uber-corporatized environment. And despite all of the things our leaders say about how much they value hard work and education and service-above-and-beyond, no one really cares when doctors are done wrong.

The bottom line . . . the sole reason that this blog ever existed . . . is that fifteen years ago, Randolph Hospital (in Asheboro, N.C.) fired me for saving a critically-ill newborn baby's life. To this day, I cannot wrap my head around it. There is a giant black hole in my heart and it's never going away.

I reported the incident to hospital Peer Review the very next morning (and later the Medical Board and USDHHS/JCAHO) . . . defying the threats of hospital executives to do it . . . and thus became a medical whistle-blower long before whistle-blowing was cool.

Two weeks later, I was fired. My life and career went into a tailspin BECAUSE I DID THE RIGHT THING BY A PATIENT.

NO ONE in a position of local (the hospital's Board of Directors)/state/Federal oversight so much as blinked an eye when it happened. My agreements with the Federal government/National Health Service Corps were MEANINGLESS - the terms and conditions not enforced. Every promise the government ever made to me was broken - and the government did not have my back.

There was no support. There was no help. The cavalry never showed up.

Again, folks, this was REALITY in Hillary's "village". Some people think that she should be our next President. And I have to shake my head in wonder. "What difference does it make?", seems to be a theme with this woman when it comes to other people's lives.

While I was trapped in a contractual black hole (in our "right-to-work" state), the hometown practice I had labored to build . . . the practice that our Federal government said was mine to transition . . . was absorbed by my "non-profit" employer. Hundreds-of-thousands of taxpayer dollars (used to recruit me home and RETAIN my services in Asheboro) were thrown down the drain.

I was the first Pediatrician hired by Randolph Medical Associates - and the first doctor they fired. But I FOUGHT BACK. And there are doctors in private practice in Asheboro right now who were able to transition their practices and get on with their happy lives because I fought that fight - for all the good it did me.

As I write this, Randolph Medical Associates is recruiting yet another Pediatrician to their revolving doors.

What if they'd just kept the doctor they started with . . . the one who accepted the salary/didn't take the job to get rich . . . the one who didn't want to leave and who didn't move away?

In the end, no one paid for the mistakes and lies and CRIMES of hospital executives but me.

The wagons of our now-dying-mill-town's-"right-people" circled around three businessmen who would have had me hang up on a terrified nurse and let a baby die.

They demonstrated what their small town really valued, and they cannot now understand why it's "dying". They hold prayer vigils for the city now, but have done nothing to atone for their sins against their own. I honestly don't know how the doctors who were sitting on the hospital's Board-of-Directors when all of this happened sleep at night.

The cover-up and publicly-subsidized legal bullying was mere sport to these mill-town kings. It became a joke . . . something for the good-ole-boys of Asheboro to laugh and snicker about at the Country Clubs or the Courthouse.

Alas, their joke was my life and dream . . . of living and working and "giving back" to the once-Mayberryesque place where I was raised.

Asheboro was my HOMETOWN. I could not just roll over and accept that Randolph Hospital's senior executives could just get away with something like that. So I fought back. HARD.

I am not the least bit sorry.

But I'm very sad about what the fight taught me about my fellow man/woman . . . about my government . . . about the law in this country . . . and about a profession I consider a calling, not just a job.

I won the battle (two lawsuits settled in my favor), but lost the war (the whole point of the Court fight was to be able to come back home and start over again . . . but getting swindled at settlement - by lying & bad faith now fully-sanctioned by a Guilford County judge - prohibited that).

The deck was stacked against me from day one. Lawsuit or not, no one was going to hold Randolph Hospital executives accountable for what they'd done to the Pediatrician in public service.

Draped in faux-charity, they were/are untouchable.

In the end, I don't really care what the Court says about the technical definition of perjury. I was cheated out of the true worth of what I had built and what I had earned. My cause was just. And I know that Bob Morrison and Steven Eblin, long shielded from accountability for their actions by their friends-in-high-places, are LYING PARASITES who've gotten rich on the misery of others, and have all but sucked the community-I-grew-up-in dry . . . they both have to reach WAY-up-high to find the gutter.

What they did to me in 1998 - when things in Asheboro were going very well, could not be more relevant to what is going on in 2013 - now that the town is barely on life-support.

(In either state, I never caught a break.)

Obamacare (PPACA) has dumped approximately 30 million more patients on a beyond-broken/all-but-bankrupt system, but did not create ONE SINGLE NEW DOCTOR. Meanwhile, the Medical Boards and Societies of North Carolina talk a good game about protecting patients, but in truth, they kowtow to the big hospital systems/corporations, and have DONE NOTHING legislatively to protect employed and/or contracted physicians from retaliation for blowing the whistle on bad care or fraud & abuse . . . or simply telling administrators that they're wrong/out-of-line/have pushed too far.

Practicing medicine isn't about practicing medicine any more.

The majority of politicians writing our laws are lawyers. They have NO CLUE about what is really happening on the front lines of medicine. Doctors have no real power - and no voice (the AMA "represents" barely 30% of us - if that - and is next to useless in any political forum that challenges bigger government intrusions into medicine). As a result, the big Federal laws with the lame acronyms (HCQIA, HIPAA, PPACA) have left good physicians with no real recourse when they're mistreated by big systems/corporations. It's all been given up to the corporate/political machine.

Federal and state law is DECADES behind the times. The legal cabals running our small town/big city Courthouses don't begin to comprehend the unique problems physicians now face in the murky quagmire of laws-few-have-read-much-less-fully-understand, confidentiality, and privacy.

The legal crushing of my case against Randolph Hospital makes it crystal clear that it's okay for "non-profit" officers to abuse the public trust, to spit on the "mission" of Federal & state programs, to plunder taxpayer-subsidized coffers to their own ends, and to lie in Court. No one cares about blatant conflicts-of-interest amongst those charged with oversight or law enforcement. The basic principles of good faith and fair play that I was raised to BELIEVE in no longer count for anything.

Recent headlines about BILLIONS of healthcare dollars lost to fraud in North Carolina (alone) . . . Medicare and Medicaid plundered . . . prove beyond any shadow of any doubt that there is NO effective oversight of the people actually running our medicine shows.

It's not going to change until someone big goes to jail. Alas, our legal system is rigged to prevent that. No case demonstrates it more than mine.

The blog was therapy for a while - and a hobby after that. I wanted to change the world - to make it better for the next newbie. But it's not doing me any good now. I've proven You Can't Go Home Again, and I know now that God has NOTHING to do with The House of God.

And/so it's time to stop blogging, concentrate on the work, try to fill the black hole in my heart, endeavor to heal the scarred psyche, and write my own book with a catchy title sometime down the road.

*Once I'm done archiving (it should take a few months, I think), select Housecalls posts will go back up (in a link list on the lower sidebar) and stay up. So if you're looking for something in particular, please check back later.

It was an interesting run. But you can't fix a world that doesn't want to be fixed, and I've run out of energy to blog.

Thanks for reading. Really, I MEAN it. Thanks.

Contact Me: MHJMD@triad.rr.com

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