Dr. Peter J. Weiss

I want to address some com­ments I received regard­ing my last post.  They went along these lines — “Pete, you used some strong lan­guage there.  What are you say­ing?   That we can’t trust doc­tors?  That we can’t trust hos­pi­tals?  Are you say­ing that they’re just in it for the money?”

No, I’m not say­ing that doc­tors and other peo­ple in the med­ical indus­try are “just in it for the money.”  Not at all.  The vast major­ity of them got into health­care to help other peo­ple, and that’s what they’re try­ing to do.  What I am say­ing is that often their view is lim­ited, and that what they rec­om­mend may not be best for you.

The treat­ment of back pain and other spinal dis­or­ders is a case in point.  Many sur­geons are per­form­ing aggres­sive oper­a­tions and other inva­sive pro­ce­dures that they truly believe help patients, yet stud­ies don’t sup­port them.  Spinal surgery has exploded in Amer­ica in recent years.  Why?  Could it be a “med­ical fad?”

Drug com­pa­nies believe they are help­ing us by mak­ing more pills for more con­di­tions.  We take them, but are we health­ier?  What if there are other answers than pills for our prob­lems? Who will help us find them?  Not many firms are ded­i­cated to find­ing sim­ple but unprof­itable solu­tions for patients.

So what’s going on in the med­ical indus­try then?  I think that what’s hap­pen­ing is related to three things — a mis­placed focus, lim­ited knowl­edge, and the money issue.  We have mis­placed our focus in health­care.  We tend to focus on the symp­toms and the phys­i­ol­ogy more than on the per­son with the prob­lems.

Addi­tion­ally it’s very easy to believe that “what I do is the right thing to do,” espe­cially if you have a lim­ited focus, lim­ited knowl­edge, and your busi­ness depends on pro­vid­ing ser­vices or prod­ucts that are prof­itable.  Let’s be hon­est, money does influ­ence peo­ple.  Even in the non-profit world they have a say­ing, “no mar­gin, no mis­sion.”

And let’s own up to this too — all of us have lim­ited knowl­edge.  Your doc­tors may know very lit­tle about ways of help­ing you through non-Western or non-pharmacologic approaches.  I didn’t when I was prac­tic­ing.  You may need to look beyond our health­care sys­tem for your answers.

So back to the first ques­tion, can you trust health­care providers?  Yes, but only so far.  You can trust that most of them are doing the best that they can, and that they want to help you.  But at the same time you can­not trust them to know every­thing, and you can­not trust them to know what’s best for you.  You must take respon­si­bil­ity for your own care.

That’s what I was try­ing to say.