Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Florida Gov­er­nor Rick Scott and Lt. Gov­er­nor Jen­nifer Car­roll are stream­lin­ing health­care in Florida.

Have you noticed that many doc­tors always think they need to be in charge of every­thing and any­thing related to health or health­care?

Here’s just the lat­est exam­ple.  This week Rick Scott, Governor-elect of my home state of Florida, announced through his tran­si­tion team that he may stream­line and sim­plify the state health­care bureau­cracy by merg­ing four state agen­cies, two of which — the Florida Depart­ment of Health and the Agency for Health Care Admin­is­tra­tion — are the prin­ci­pal reg­u­la­tors of health­care in Florida.

I don’t know enough yet to com­ment on the mer­its of the plan, but you know I believe that we’ve made health­care overly com­plex.  So my bias is to sup­port any step that makes things less com­plex in the gov­ern­ment arena or in the pri­vate sec­tor.  (And make no mis­take that it’s gov­ern­ment action that has caused health­care to be so com­plex in the pri­vate sec­tor.)

But I’m digress­ing from my main point, which is that Florida’s physi­cians in the form of the Florida Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion (FMA) and the Florida Pub­lic Health Asso­ci­a­tion (FPHA) are now insist­ing that a doc­tor must run the com­bined agency.

Sta­ple­ton

Mag­yar

Here’s FMA EVP Tim­o­thy Sta­ple­ton weigh­ing in with, “…it is imper­a­tive that a med­ical doc­tor be in charge…” San­dra Mag­yar, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the FPHA had this to say, “The head of the agency has got to be a doc­tor.”

Such arro­gance.  The truth is, most doc­tors don’t know every­thing about health and health­care.  They just think they do.  And I acknowl­edge that I’ve been guilty of this kind of think­ing over my 25-year career, but now my eyes are open.

I’ve prac­ticed in the mil­i­tary, prac­ticed in the pri­vate sec­tor, and taken a more pub­lic health role in man­aged care.  I’ve seen and done a lot, from treat­ing patients to run­ning an insur­ance com­pany, and I’m still learn­ing how nar­row my views of health and health­care were when I thought of myself pri­mar­ily as a doc­tor.

So doc­tors, please get over your­selves.  An M.D. degree does not mean you should be in charge of every­thing.

From my per­spec­tive, Florida needs some­one who can lead the cit­i­zens of our state to health AND tame the health­care mon­ster, because while health­care is impor­tant, it’s not every­thing and more is not bet­ter.

As a for­mer health­care guy, Rick Scott is prob­a­bly well qual­i­fied to decide who should be in charge, but Rick, if you’re read­ing this — please pick some­one who believes in MORE HEALTH and LESS CARE!