HEALTHCARE–AMERICA
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Del Meyer was born in Okarche, Oklahoma which was near the Concho Indian Reservation. Oklahoma had become a state in 2007. The William MEYER family had moved there from Illinois for an expanded farming opportunity in 2008. Each new resident received a 40-acre parcel of farmland from the former INDIAN Territory. The Meyer family with four sons and three daughters received seven parcels which supported continuing farming.
He was born at home in1935 with the family doctor Paul Neuman, MD, in attendance. He was born on his physician’s birthday who christened him as a future doctor. This emphasis remained with him during his entire education experience.
Del did the usual farm work in the fields in the summertime when out of school. He was exposed to considerable grain and field dust. He developed asthma which then confirmed that he was not fit to continue with the family farms as recommended by his physician. Other professions that farm boys could pursue at that time were medicine, ministry and law. While attending school, he assisted with the morning and evening chores, including milking the cows and tending to the farm animals, such as feeding the chickens, slopping the hogs, and feeding the sheep.
He attended Kansas University and upon graduation enrolled in the Kansas University School of Medicine graduating with an MD degree in 1966.
Upon graduation he interned at Wayne County General Hospital and then continued with his specialty training in Internal Medicine at this same hospital which was the largest hospital in the United States with 6500 patients with 500 in the acute hospital, which was the primary focus of the training programs, with the depths in the other divisions of psychiatry and the infirmary. These provided experience in a number of chronic diseases not normally found in training programs.
He had been deferred for his postdoctoral training by the Berry Plan which was designed by Dr. Berry to procure a continuous supply of physicians for the military services in the various specialties, by deferment for specialty training with the caveat of then joining the Medical Corps for a minimum of two years of active duty or the length of the deferment.
After two years in the United States Air Force, he obtained a National institutes of Health (NIH) fellowship in Pulmonary Medicine which he took at KUMC. The school was in its formative stage as a new UC medical school. He was the first pulmonary medicine fellow in the new program being established by Dr. Carroll Cross, who designed the pulmonary training programs utilizing international rotating visiting professorships. He opened a private office in Sacramento, California for the practice of Pulmonary Medicine in July 1970. He contributed articles to the society journal: Sacramento Medicine and then was offered the editorship. In addition to the monthly editor’s column, he introduced an additional column: HIPPOCRATES AND HIS KIN as well as a medical book review column. These can be accessed on his website: www.DelMeyer.net [1]
Being the first fully trained pulmonologist in Sacramento, this allowed him to be very innovative in practice. He hired an RN which was unusual in the community who helped with his home visit programs for severely ill respiratory failure patients, many on life support with ventilators. The home ventilators were just hitting the market at that time. With the expertise of an RN, this supported tracheostomy care at home with good home visit support.
There was a need for this type of care as was seen with his full appointment schedule from day one. This caused him to recruit a second pulmonologist immediately upon his arrival. He continued with a full appt schedule, and he recruited a third pulmonologist. This afforded him the opportunity to establish full pulmonary service in three hospitals in the area as well as adding two associates. This improved the nighttime call schedule to every third night on call and every third weekend. Patients could now enter the practice from any of the three hospitals and the three offices they established.
They were able to upgrade the pulmonary function laboratory in each of the three hospitals to university caliber. They then proceeded to establish full pulmonary function laboratories in each of their three offices to the same sophistication as the hospital PFT labs which was a $30,000 investment in each office.
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Back Page Summary.
America’s Healthcare crises is not of recent origin. Forty years ago, Drs Goodman & Musgrave identified significant problems with America’s healthcare only because healthcare is the most regulated and politicized sector of our economy. It takes considerable understanding of economics, medical care, politics, ethics, and emotions for anyone to obtain a unified view of America’s healthcare. Healthcare has gone through many revisions, but each has made it more complicated and expensive. They found that medical care was actually relatively inexpensive, but insurance has made it more costly.
The yearly physical exams have not yielded any improvement in healthcare outcomes. With the algorithm we present, the routine maintenance of our healthcare can be self-directed and insurance free until you require hospital care. It involves physicians only when questions occur not explained in the protocol. This represents a significant cost reduction in your own healthcare monitoring costs. Laboratory medical directors can now authorize the few screening tests that are appropriate as outlined in the proposal for diseases without any symptoms.
So, begin to save healthcare costs by paying for monitoring your own health with this algorithm. Out patience healthcare costs are a personal responsibility. Therefore, health insurance is only required for hospital care which could not be provided as outpatient medical or surgical care were not needed or utilized until a patient required in-patient medical or surgical care, thus saving enormous hospital related healthcare costs. Pending further actuarial review it is estimated that this will reduce the cost of healthcare by 50 percent or even more.
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