Patient care requires privacy. Only patient safety can trump it.

What about doctors’ privacy?

Most voters do not care. They should, but not because doctors do. The public should worry because everything that impacts doctors impacts patient care.

Our society functions on freedom and private property, which includes privacy.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights enshrines the Right to Privacy in Article 12 and elsewhere. The right to privacy is the right of the individual to decide for himself how much he will share about his personal “thoughts, feelings and the facts about his personal life.” (Scruton p 441)

Western democracies revolve around privacy and civil liberties. See Canada’s Privacy Commissioner  and the USA’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Board .

“Private life [comes] to an end” in Orwellian totalitarianism.

Even The Toronto Star writes, “Canada’s Privacy Commissioner says there’s an urgent need for stronger privacy laws to protect personal information.”

Privacy Versus Publication

Given the primacy of privacy, publication of doctors’ billings must rest on a truly profound argument to justify the attack. Is this an issue of Continue reading “Privacy, Patient Care, and Sunshine Lists”

Life is full of hard choices.

Imagine a bully beating up your little brother.

The bully is bigger and louder than you and your brother.

If you run for a teacher, it would be too late.

You could fight the bully and lose. Or you could cut your losses, and run away. Your brother should have avoided the bully in the first place.

Consider a slightly different case in which a bully is beating up your older brother. Would your options change?

To Fight or Not to Fight

Benthamites would run away in both cases. Jeremy Bentham, the father of Utilitarianism (or Benthamism), said we should seek the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Happiness means maximum pleasure and minimum pain. Utilitarians would assess the bully, weigh the odds, and run away. They call it felicific calculus.

Utilitarian calculus created the Poor Laws and workhouses of 1834, described in Dickens’ Oliver Twist.

Most people agree: We should not put citizens in workhouses or Hunger Games, even for the sake of peace and order. The end is good; the means are not.

Utilitarians focus on actions and consequences. If an action causes a good outcome, then the action is good. For utilitarians, consequences matter most.  Utilitarians do not focus on the agent doing the action or the intentions of said agent.

OMA and the Top 100

What does this have to do with the Ontario Medical Association and publishing the billings of the top 100 doctors?

On one hand, the OMA works to maximize happiness for the greatest number of its members. This works most of the time, but not when a small group comes under attack.

How many resources should the OMA divert from the many to expend on the few?

If the cost is small, is it good to fight even if we might lose?

Should we only fight when the odds are in our favour? Continue reading “Should We Fight for the Top 100 Billing Doctors?”

Hello, my name is Shawn.

I have Medicare Obsession Syndrome (MOS).

When I told my wife, she laughed harder than expected.

Like most things, everyone knows your problems before you do.

I think other doctors may have the same obsession.

The 12th step says, “Having had a spiritual awakening…we tried to carry this message to [others].”

Medicare Obsession Syndrome

Medicare Obsession Syndrome is not burnout, but can lead to it.

Burnout is a “state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress”.

Burnout often comes in jobs where workers feel “overworked and undervalued” with little sense of control.

Dr. Pamela Wible says physicians are experiencing abuse, not burnout.

Medicare Obsession Syndrome is an unrelenting, all encompassing, life consuming, every-waking-minute addiction to thinking about medical politics. Continue reading “Addicted to Medical Politics – Medicare Obsession Syndrome”