Kate’s Next to Last Day of Work

Summer                                              Under the Lily Moon

Business meeting this am.  Our financial situation looks good.  For now.  Wondering about the changes to the tax code, the possibility of continued slow to no growth.  Impacts of both would require changes in our budget.  Still, that’s tomorrow’s problem and today’s, as the good book says, are sufficient unto themselves.

Took Kate into work for the second to last time.  Next Wednesday she goes in 5:00 to 9:00 for her last work session in a long career, dating back to her 19th birthday.  Since then, one way or another, she’s been involved in medicine.  That’s over 49 years, damn near 50, and the last 18 driving Highway 10 south to the Coon Rapids Allina Clinic.

The change to medicine run as a corporate enterprise and a vertically integrated one at that has made practicing much less appealing to her.  Schedules, pace, income, review all dependent on corporate norms, not medical results.  The physician has transisted, over her years of practice, from a private, mom and/or pop shop to giant clinics like Coon Rapids stuffed with specialties and designed to “maximize revenue.”  Not as much fun, not as good a medical environment for either patients or docs.  Great for administrators, though.