When Dollars Dictate Our Decisions
I had an uncomfortable conversation with a clinician a couple weeks ago in which he tried to justify his inadequate treatment of Medical Assistance patients based on the fact that he is so poorly reimbursed by the state. He kept trying to tell me that he is the ONLY clinician seeing these patients and he had to see a lot of them to meet his expenses. It's no wonder he has had disciplinary action taken by the Board of Dentistry because his thinking has a terminal defect; it is just not true. One of the essential pillars of LionsGate Leadership teaching is to tell yourself the truth. Making an error at this threshold leads to multiple poor decisions moving forward.
The siren song of these difficult economic times is that each of us must somehow cut our costs or see more patients or do something to make more money. At one level these are prudent business decisions but, as with many other things, when taken to their extreme they become destructive to both the patients and the clinician. My personal feeling has always been that my patients deserve the best I can give regardless of their socioeconomic status and if it costs me a little more or my profit margin is a little less, so be it. This doesn't mean giving away the farm because the situation doesn't come up that much. But I will never allow myself to determine treatment based on my income. We'd like to think that all our colleagues behave that way as well but, after more than 3 decades in dentistry I know that is not true.
Who is the biggest loser in these situations? Interestingly it's not the patient, it's the dentist. Once their integrity has been compromised it is easier to compromise it again, and then again and then... Rather, I would prefer to pursue a level of character defined by C.S. Lewis when he said," There is a difference between doing some particular just or temperate action and being a just or temperate man. Someone who is a good tennis player may now or then make a good shot. What you mean by a good player is a man whose eye and muscles and nerves have been so trained by making innumerable good shots that they can now be relied on....In the same way a man who perseveres in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character.
May we all be known as people of that kind of character!
The siren song of these difficult economic times is that each of us must somehow cut our costs or see more patients or do something to make more money. At one level these are prudent business decisions but, as with many other things, when taken to their extreme they become destructive to both the patients and the clinician. My personal feeling has always been that my patients deserve the best I can give regardless of their socioeconomic status and if it costs me a little more or my profit margin is a little less, so be it. This doesn't mean giving away the farm because the situation doesn't come up that much. But I will never allow myself to determine treatment based on my income. We'd like to think that all our colleagues behave that way as well but, after more than 3 decades in dentistry I know that is not true.
Who is the biggest loser in these situations? Interestingly it's not the patient, it's the dentist. Once their integrity has been compromised it is easier to compromise it again, and then again and then... Rather, I would prefer to pursue a level of character defined by C.S. Lewis when he said," There is a difference between doing some particular just or temperate action and being a just or temperate man. Someone who is a good tennis player may now or then make a good shot. What you mean by a good player is a man whose eye and muscles and nerves have been so trained by making innumerable good shots that they can now be relied on....In the same way a man who perseveres in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character.
May we all be known as people of that kind of character!
posted by Anonymous at 9:44 PM
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