Hello, my fellow patients.
I’m writing this today not just as a physician, but as someone who has watched the world of medicine change in ways I never imagined when I first started my practice back in 1995. It’s a reflection on where we’ve come from, and more importantly, where we are today, especially when it comes to a place as critical as a surgery center.
Back then, the landscape was simple. The majority of us physicians worked for ourselves. What that really meant was that we worked for you, our patients. Our loyalty was to the person in front of us, not to a corporate balance sheet. The decisions we made were based on one thing and one thing only: your health and well-being. Our practices, and the surgery centers we worked in, were extensions of that commitment.
But over the years, how things have changed. First, physicians started working for hospitals. Then, large hospital organizations. And now, we’re seeing a new owner in town: the private equity firm, the hedge fund, the Wall Street-funded company. Medicine has been totally transformed. The place where you go for a procedure, the surgery center, might look the same on the outside, but the people it answers to are completely different.
So, what does this mean for you? It means that in many of these facilities, the physicians have no real stake in their own practice or in their own patients. Instead, they are compelled to have their loyalty to the financial investors who own the center. The primary goal shifts from patient outcomes to profit margins. Decisions about equipment, staffing, and even the amount of time a doctor can spend with you can be made by people in a boardroom who have never met you.
I see it happening all around us. Here in our own community, many surgery centers have been bought and sold so many times that the physicians working there might not even know who truly owns them this month. They are caught in a system where their practice is treated like any other asset, traded between private equity firms and now, even insurance companies.
This is why the independent, physician-owned surgery center has never been more important. When a surgery center is owned by the doctors who practice there, the line of accountability is clear and direct. It runs from the physician straight to the patient.
In an independent center, we choose the best equipment and the best staff because we are not just the doctors; we are responsible for every aspect of your care. Our commitment is to you, not to an investor’s return. We have the freedom to practice medicine in a way that puts your safety, your comfort, and your successful recovery above all else. There is no one else to please. There is no one else to answer to but you.
I don’t know where this trend of corporate ownership will end, or where it will ultimately go. But I do know this: as long as there are independent physicians and independent surgery centers, there will be a place where the foundational principle of medicine—the sacred trust between a doctor and a patient—is preserved.
And that is a place worth fighting for.
Dr. Nizam Meah
