Skirmish in the Liberty vs Tyranny Arena

Memo to Board: “My clinic cannot be where the Board comes to slaughter the Constitution. It would be better that my clinic not exist anymore than to be the venue of the death of the Constitution.”

I wrote last week about a pending hearing yesterday, a culmination of my medical board’s attempts over years to make threats against my medical license on the basis of chart note nitpicking:  ‘Use these words, not those words,’ ad infinitum.  Of course, semantic disputes are a ridiculous game that bureaucrats are happy to play endlessly.

The earliest dentists to object to the use of mercury amalgam fillings, due to toxicity to both patient and dentist, were treated very badly for years by their dental boards and dental association.  When the boards found no patient complaints against these doctors, they demanded to see chart notes, having nothing else with which to attack, so that they could nitpick those dental chart notes.  It’s an old trick.

Because things are not yet settled with this legal matter, I should not discuss much about it.  But I can say this about yesterday:

Hours were spent discussing such minutiae as whether or not a doctor would choose to spell out in each daily update of a medical chart that the patient has pollen allergies.  Look, I said, we already know, or can look and see, that the patient has a pollen allergy from the “Allergies” section of the medical chart.  No, it does not have to be spelled out again every day of consult, if pollen is irrelevant to the issue of the day.  On the other hand, if a sinus or itchy eyes issue comes up, I can then look back in the Allergies section of the chart and see pollen allergy, and note it in today’s notes, or simply ask about it; it does not have to be written each day that there are no pertinent symptoms for that.

Yes, the Board’s chosen topics were that inane.

Each time it was suggested that my medical charts should serve some bureaucratic puffery rather than patient needs, or that someone else might know better than I of the words that I choose to utter, I invoked the First Amendment, and that I would continue writing as I see fit in chart notes, and as an accurate reflection of the day’s events.  That will not change at any time, even under threat of losing my medical license.

My only mic drop in those many hours of tedious semantics study yesterday was this:

“My clinic cannot be where the Board comes to slaughter the Constitution.  It would be better that my clinic not exist anymore than to be the venue of the death of the Constitution.”

The board’s attorney sighed; I think he grasped that I see this case as landmark.

Of course, I intend to keep fighting until I win this, and then I intend to let you all know more of what I have learned of effective strategies against bureaucrats who attempt to overturn the US Constitution.  Hopefully, such strategies will be useful to others in these Kafkaesque situations.

I’ll get past this storm.