This is my story. I pray that you learn from it just a fraction of the way I have learned and grown over the past several years. I hope it continues!
Growing up, I only remember ever wanting to be a doctor. I always wanted to help people and make a difference in the lives of others. I had many interests, but only one dream. The path was not easy, and there were many bumps in the road, but eventually I made it to graduation from the University of Minnesota Medical School in 2005, and headed to Houston to start residency in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics.
It took me a long time to figure out what kind of physician I wanted to become. Through a very indirect route, in 2006 I landed a residency training spot in anesthesiology at the University of Texas at Houston. I did very well and graduated in September 2009. I moved to Kansas and started a partnership-track job in January 2010.
Over the years in my job as a physician anesthesiologist, things changed drastically. Our knowledge, training, and expertise began to be undervalued at several levels. The hospitals took charge of how we ran our practice and conducted our care on a daily basis. Insurance companies paid us less and less for the same work. Patients were getting sicker and had many more health issues, including obesity, pain and opioid abuse. The reins of our patient care were held by the nurse anesthetists. And as a partner/owner, our cost of doing business went up every year. Most frustrating to me was the fact that my job involved taking care of patients that never got better from most of what they had done. Despite our performing major procedures that were indicated for one reason or another, the vast majority of our patients had significant health issues that were not directly addressed and did not improve from what we were doing. For all of these reasons I started considering other ways of helping people to truly improve their health and wellness. Unfortunately, this was the beginning of my path to the telemedicine conspiracy that led to my indictment. I will have to save that for later…
