Organized Medicine

Most doctors chose medicine because we wanted to help people and put the patients first. Can we honestly say that we are able to fulfill our set goals?

Medical education has become exorbitantly expensive with an average cost of $200,000-250,000 for four years of tuition and living expenses. The physician’s earnings have been either stagnant or trending downwards.

Regarding to the Graduate Medical Education, economic concerns outweigh the medical residents’ health and patients’ safety. For instance, AMA and AOA strongly resist to the recommendations made by Institute of Medicine on Resident Duty Hours because it will cost yearly extra $1.7 billion to the hospitals. The overworked environment and long years of training do take a toll of the graduates’ emotion and ideals, which had drawn them into medicine in the first place. It has been reported most graduates get dehumanized at the end of their training.

The past year long debate of health care reform, medical professional organizations were only playing a secondary role. A large number of physicians have become very disenchanted with AMA and AOA for getting on the bandwagon in supporting of the health care law that does not address any issues or concerns of the medical profession such as: medical liability reform, repeal the unjust Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate system, increase funding in undergraduate and graduate medical education.

Let this be a wake up call for all the physicians and future physicians to be more involved in order to shape the healthcare landscape instead of leaving to politicians, business people and lawyers to dictate how we should practice medicine. We spend long years of learning and training how to take care of people and it would be a waste for not able to put patient first as our primary objectives. Only 15 members of the 111th Congress are physicians compared to 54 lawyers serving the Senate and 162 lawyers serving the House, respectively.

Therefore, I believe that all physicians and future physicians should at least join the medical societies at the local and national levels in order to help other leaders advocating on the patient’s behalf if we want to take a leading role in the future health care practice.

Osteopathic Medicine
Osteopathic physicians are in a unique situation as they can join both allopathic and osteopathic organizations. One can legitimately question the benefits and cost effectiveness of being parts of both organizations. About 70% DO graduates have chosen to pursue training in the ACGME programs, are there still incentives for them to remain loyal to the osteopathic profession?

Allopathic medical specialties are much larger and more powerful to defend the interests of their members.
Disagreements about some issues exist among some D.O.s with AOA. .

Being in a minority medical profession, I urge D.O.s from all walks of life join both osteopathic and allopathic organizations. The extra thousand dollars of expenses in dual memberships can be claimed as professional expenses.

Osteopathic unity as a profession is primordially important to our survival. D.O.s, either trained in AOA or ACGME programs, practice medicine by the virtues of the Osteopathic Oath. One emphasis of the oath is the loyalty to the profession. This request reminds us the principles and practice of osteopathic medicine and be united in our common goal of protecting the survival and the promotion of our minority profession. Only osteopathic associations have interests at heart in fighting for D.O.s’ parity in practice rights, credential recognitions, and insurance reimbursements. Our profession is forecast to represent 10% of the physician population by 2020. The exponential growth of the profession will make DO brand a household name sooner.

Who am I to give my opinions to other outstanding colleagues? I am just an average TCOM 2002 graduate and recently completed vitreo-retinal surgery in July 2009. I have been practicing vitreo-retinal diseases and surgery, and optic nerves diseases in Peoria, I.L. since September 2009. I serve as Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery of University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria. I am currently an active member of AOA, TOMA, IOMS, American Academy of Ophthalmology and American Osteopathic College of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. I have also participated in the AOA iLearn mentor program. I have become more involved in the osteopathic profession because I perceived discrimination against my alma mater TCOM, a full-fledged state-sponsored medical school, being relegated to a second class school because of the plan to start an MD school on campus in the hope of bringing more prestige to the University. Duplication of the parallel administrative structures of another medical school will cost millions of tax-payer dollars annually. Moreover, the realistic start-up cost can rise as high as $100 millions. These financial resources should be wisely invested in starting up residency programs in the local hospitals.

In conclusion, osteopathic medicine has survived the past two centuries and is here to stay forever. This profession has given us the opportunity to achieve our professional goals. Let’s be proud of our heritage and start upholding the Osteopathic Oath. Let’s end with paraphrase from president John F Kennedy’s a famous quote: “Ask not what your profession can do for you, ask what you can do for your profession.”