Paying the Price--December 2019

 

Haiti (Photo from internet)

Paying the Price for Speaking Up

Carroll, John A. MD

Emergency Medicine News: September 2006 – Volume 28 – Issue 9 – p 10–11

Editor:

I agree with Dr. Edwin Leap’s opinion in his March column, “What Are We Afraid Of?” (2006;28[3]:15.) Physicians need to go public with patient care concerns. I believe physicians don’t speak up because they fear losing their jobs and being marginalized in their community. That was my experience.

I live in a mid-sized, Midwestern city, and in September 2001, I was placed on six months’ probation from my job as an emergency physician at a large medical center. I was confined to working in the urgent care center. My probation occurred the day after I wrote a letter to the hospital administrator (with copies to all the attending physicians in the ED including the director) about my concerns regarding long waits in the ED. When I wrote the letter, the ED was crowded, patients were lying on gurneys in ED hallways, and patients were signing out because I could not admit them to a bed in a timely fashion.

After I started my probationary period, the ED director told me that I could return to the main ED if I were evaluated by the hospital’s wellness committee for burnout (a point not mentioned in the probationary letter). The hospital administrator referred to me as a “cancer in the department” who needed to be “cut out before it metastasizes.”

The ED had a dismal patient satisfaction rating of 33 percent and a low employee satisfaction level at that point. As the weeks went by, I continued to work in urgent care, but I refused to be evaluated by the wellness committee. The administrator who had referred to me as a “cancer” was discussing my case inside and outside the hospital. I was made the problem rather than placing the blame on the systematic deficiencies that plagued the ED.

While working an urgent care shift in December 2001, I was called to the administrator’s office, and with another administrator, the ED director, and hospital legal counsel present, I was fired. After 20 good years as a resident and staff physician there, I packed up my gear and left.

The reason I wrote to the hospital administrator that September was that ED crowding and hospital bed capacity are systemic hospital issues. I also did not think the ED director would do much. Besides being the ED director, he had been the project medical director for the previous eight years, and he was still on the payroll of the city’s only private ambulance company, the exclusive provider of the city’s paramedic and transport prehospital care. The hospital is the base station for the area, and is the main supporter of the lucrative private ambulance service. Our fire department is held to a nontransport basic level, and according to the firefighters, obstacles were thrown up over the years by my boss when they attempted to advance their level of care for the citizens of the city. This arrangement was known all over the state in EMS circles and considered a serious conflict of interest by many.

Before and after I was fired, I attempted to go through channels within the medical center to explain my concerns for the prehospital patient and about the long waits in the ED. Administrators, corporate, and the ethics committee would not address my complaints. Letters to the JCAHO and the state department of public health were not helpful.

I have picketed the hospital, written letters to the local newspaper, and presented frequently to the citizens’ forum at city council meetings. I also have written a weblog, Peoria’s Medical Mafia, about the past five years. Recently, a local newspaper editorial stated that our ED was seeing almost twice the number of patients that the original ED was designed to accommodate safely, and it noted that diversion of patients due to insufficient hospital bed capacity was a significant issue.

The most difficult part of this experience isn’t being unemployed. It is abandonment by people who I thought would stand up for quality care issues facing our community. Many of my physician mentors who taught me patient care when I did my residency there no longer will see me or speak to me. The religious community that founded the medical center is silent, and the business community in our close-knit city supports the medical center and the private ambulance company. The EMS issues here that could be improved for public health reasons are relegated to secondary importance, with money taking precedence.

I would do this again but only reluctantly. Going public is necessary for physicians if we want positive change. It is not a heroic thing to do. It should be expected. But be ready to pay the price.

 

John A. Carroll, MD

Peoria, IL