Dr. Walther Meyer Celebrates 60 years of Medical Practice

All experiences are personal and what I have come to believe is the result of my personal medical experiences over the past 60 years.

These experiences have also shaped my hopes about what the future of medicine will look like.

It seems to me that we in the medical industry are heading in the wrong direction, because we aren't focusing on individual health and wellness.

Because of the large investments needed to have a medical practice today, my early medical practice and our small medical clinic have gone the way of the horse and buggy.

It is now rare for a physician not to be employed by the medical industry in some way or other. I started out as a country doctor in a medical practice and ended up as a doctor in a medical industry.

When I was president of the Medford Clinic and fully aware of what was happening, my two partners and I sold our clinic to a much larger medical corporation and became a part of it.

I and other medical professionals were, in a sense absorbed by the medical industry, because the small clinic we had did not have the capital resources to continue to compete with larger corporate medical organizations. At least in my experience, physicians have adjusted to this quite readily, but no longer decided what to charge a patient for our services or to give our professional services free if we felt like it. In that way it is understandable that the corporate structure limited my individual freedom. After a while, I no longer controlled my patient scheduling.

On the other side of the equation, I have seen how the medical staff has limited the medical industry. The medical industry cannot function without the cooperation of doctors and their special talents. The doctors have allowed themselves to be managed by the industry, but the medical industry can't get too far ahead of their medical staff either. The pharmaceutical industry greatly influences doctors and controls most of the medical studies that are read by medical staffs. Standards of care protocols are developed with drug company input, and have greatly influenced physicians. This situation also does not foster innovation within the health care industry, which is also greatly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.

When I started practicing at the Medford Clinic we had one nurse and one business manager (bookkeeper) for 3 doctors. Now there are about 25 support people for one doctor, and it is not going to get better.

Patients have told me that they have become ever more dissatisfied with the present, rushed office visit. They want to have the information and tools to take back personal control of their health and they are searching for health and wellness information. There is much new information in the fields of nutrition, health and wellness that is not being shared with our patient community. For example in my area a Community Nutrition/Wellness Forum is being effectively censored because of administration and medical staff (mostly) bias. As medical professionals, we should be providing alternative health information to our community and trust people to decide for themselves what is best for them.

As a physician, in a clinic setting, it has become a challenge to listen to the patient long enough to determine what is the cause of their symptoms. Treating symptoms without paying attention to the cause of these symptoms is not in the patient's interest and is one of the big problems with present day healthcare system as I see it.

It is not hard to understand why the cost of medical care keeps rising. The medical industry is in a constant effort to make the industry profitable. There are huge costs of keeping up with new high-tech diagnostic equipment, increasing costs to support medical personnel, billing personnel, and compliance specialists, and to conform to ever increasing governmental regulation. All of this causes the costs of the 'medical care' to keep rising.

Going in the direction in which we are going, there is no end in sight and our medical care costs have already become the highest in the world. A significant percentage of these increased costs have little positive impact on actual patient care.

Having participated in this medical care transformation, I don't really think that there are villains who are to blame for the situation that we, as physicians, patients, or the corporate medical industry itself, find ourselves in. We have had to accept government regulations, because the government pays a lot of the bills. Most health insurance is purchased by the workplace and individuals feel that, with their medical insurance they don't have to worry about the costs of their program, except for their co-pay. One of the biggest of our problems is that there are very many individuals and families without any health insurance. According to the Heritage Foundation, this has caused a 200 billion shift in healthcare dollars.

My hope for the future is that we will find a way to return control of healthcare to the individual or family. We will have to empower the individual with the knowledge, resources, and the tools to take personal responsibility for their health and wellness.

It should be up to the individual to pick and choose -and pay for - the kind of medical care or wellness care that they want.

As a physician, I have had experiences that make me absolutely sure that government mandated 'health insurance' is not the answer. Government programs only pay for 'approved' drugs and treatments. The FDA will not approve non-pharmaceuticals. They allow certain levels of known toxins into our food supply, and get their money from the industry that they are supposed to regulate. They also have the power to keep natural products, like Stevia for example, from being imported and have been aggressively lobbying against nutritional products, implying that they may not be safe to take with medications.

Nutritional products of great value are not available through governmental programs or insurance plans. Convinced that there 'had to be a way' to get them for a patient of mine, I spent two afternoons, worked through dozens of websites only to find that (even if a nutrient had gone through all of the necessary steps for approval), the manufacturer of the product would not sell it to the government for 40% of the product's cost.

Modern medicine has made unbelievable advances in diagnosis, acute care, and surgical techniques, but chronic diseases continue to be epidemic.

The future of medicine does not lie in treating illness but in preventing it. As individuals we will need to demand that we get personal control of our health and need to determine which health plan is best for us. We will need legislation and be empowered to control our own health insurance, just like we are able to make the determination of which house to live in or which car to drive.

In order to be relevant to the individual patient and family, the medical industry will need to provide help for individuals with health and wellness programs. In my opinion the greatest current potential for this will probably be through industrial wellness programs.

Even though the medical industry has become great in sickness care, we also have an obligation to become first in preventative healthcare. We need to empower our patients with information and tools to assume personal responsibility for their own health. They need personalized insurance programs, information and education on health maintenance and wellness.

The medical industry has a great opportunity to get back into healthcare by implementing complementary or integrative medicine programs within our outpatient clinics. There are physicians with the knowledge and inclination to lead on this endeavor.

In my opinion, the patient's option of having a choice to see physicians knowledgeable in integrative medicine would be welcomed and be economically self-sustaining and profitable for our healthcare industry.

In my opinion, medical staffs keep this from happening. Many of our medical professionals have an antipathy to the entire concept of new nutrition and wellness information because it has not been a part of our long medical education.

The enlightened medical industry will need to take the lead to return the control of healthcare to individuals. By doing so, it will regain the trust of our patients who will again see us as advocates for them.

There are physicians trained, and ready to lead in the development of integrative or complimentary medical clinics. The rest of us, physicians and caregivers, do not need to be alarmed that we have to learn something new. We will all gain in association with clinical specialists in integrative medicine. It will help the medical industry show their renewed interest in a new community service and foster the doctor/patient relationship.

Walther Meyer MD, CMD

You can contact Dr. Meyer by e-mail at info@nutritionalmedicine-wm.com or call at 715-748-3197.

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