Thank you so much for reporting on the shortage of anesthesiologists in the local Providence Health System hospitals, (“Surgery delays, frustrated patients stack up after Providence replaces Portland anesthesiology provider,” Nov. 29). There is a growing corporate culture of medicine that treats physicians as easily replaceable widgets, and Providence is now learning the folly of that approach. They might have learned the lesson had they observed the consequence of such action at Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center in 2010, when long term anesthesiologists were summarily dismissed and another national corporation took over. It did not end well.
As an obstetrician and gynecologist, I know first-hand that physicians in all specialties rely on a high degree of competence and integrity in the anesthesia services at the hospitals where they practice. Delivery of anesthesia is critical to the work we do. It should not be up to the whims of hospital administrators to make these decisions. The scarcity of anesthesia services at those hospitals is clearly a self-inflicted wound. Pity.
Marguerite P. Cohen, Portland
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