Dr. Peter J. Weiss

As a young physi­cian, trained as an infec­tious dis­ease spe­cial­ist, I had a pas­sion for tak­ing care of very sick peo­ple.  Typ­i­cally I spent the major­ity of my work­day in the hos­pi­tal treat­ing indi­vid­u­als with seri­ous ill­nesses – bone and joint infec­tions, bac­te­r­ial sep­sis, pneu­mo­nia and the like.  It was an intel­lec­tual chal­lenge and very reward­ing to make a dif­fer­ence at such a crit­i­cal time in the lives of oth­ers.

Although happy with that posi­tion, one thing led to another when a new health insur­ance com­pany was formed by the local health­care sys­tem and needed a Med­ical Direc­tor.  While help­ing the new health plan man­age some drug for­mu­lary issues I became friends with its lead­ers.  Even­tu­ally I was asked to serve as Med­ical Direc­tor, and after much con­sid­er­a­tion I accepted the posi­tion.

This new role was an eye opener.  An entirely new way of look­ing at health and ill­ness was required.  No longer was I con­cerned with help­ing one per­son at a time, but instead I began work­ing to cre­ate a bet­ter health­care sys­tem to ensure that the “right things” hap­pened for all of our mem­bers.  The idea was that if the mem­bers received “qual­ity care” they would be well.  I spent a lot of time try­ing to ensure our mem­bers received all the “right care” at the “right time” from the “right doc­tor.”

Grad­u­ally it became clear to me that all my effort wasn’t really result­ing in improved health or well­ness for most of our mem­bers.  Sure some were get­ting care that they wouldn’t have if not for the work of the health plan, but we weren’t really mak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence over­all.  For instance, our mem­bers were just as over­weight as before.  Dia­betes and hyper­ten­sion were still devel­op­ing in our mem­bers just as in the pop­u­la­tion at large.  In short, more care wasn’t pro­duc­ing more health.

I real­ized that the great­est bur­den of ill­ness in our mem­bers was directly related to their lifestyles, and that more or bet­ter care wasn’t going to help most of them.  There­after, I became much more inter­ested in what I could do to help indi­vid­u­als change their life to improve their health and avoid ill­ness in the first place.

At the same time I was becom­ing increas­ingly dis­sat­is­fied with my job in gen­eral.  Work­ing for any large firm can be frus­trat­ing, but this was really just my ego get­ting the best of me.  Even­tu­ally I worked through the issues to once again be happy in my posi­tion.  How­ever, for a while I would think about quit­ting and going into prac­tice as a pri­mary care doc­tor.

Frankly, it was mostly a fan­tasy to avoid pro­duc­tively deal­ing with my per­sonal issues, but I did get some use­ful think­ing done.  Some of the things I turned over in my mind were:  What kind of doc­tor should I be? I don’t want to be the usual doc­tor giv­ing pills to those who don’t get well.  How can I be dif­fer­ent?  How am I going to help peo­ple change?  How do peo­ple actu­ally change any­way?  What gets them to start and main­tain new behav­iors?

With time, I began to gain some clar­ity around these issues, espe­cially as I worked through the frus­tra­tions I had with my job and changed myself.  I real­ized how our minds can keep us trapped in old behav­iors and how we can ini­ti­ate change by first learn­ing new pat­terns of thought and behav­ior.  The prin­ci­ples of effec­tive change and of help­ing oth­ers to change were becom­ing clear to me and I decided to try to get them down in writ­ing.

With that, the book “just hap­pened.”  The words came eas­ily and all the help I needed appeared in my life with­out much effort on my part.  Within 18 months of begin­ning to write, I had a fin­ished prod­uct ready for pub­li­ca­tion.  I thank God for giv­ing me this book.  There is no bet­ter way for me to explain it.

I hope it helps you.

Dr. Pete

Pre-order Dr. Weiss’s new book — More Health, Less Care: Cre­ate your Per­sonal Pre­scrip­tion for Life Long Health and Well-being!