Sidney Garfield, MD: Rationally Organized Medicine

I am going through new employee orientation here in Oakland, California, and was taken by these images on a conference room wall. They are of Sidney Garfield, MD, one of the founders of Kaiser Permanente, and a selection of his drawings.

As I wrote earlier on this blog, I think it’s really important to learn about where we came from as a profession so we can best think about where we are going. I wrote about the writings of Sidney Garfield in another post (you can see that, and a link to his Scientific American article here). Dr. Garfield was a medical leader who was focused on happy patients and happy doctors, unencumbered by financing mechanisms in his thinking.

I thought the concept of “Rationally Organized Medicine” was really interesting; could it be connected to a concept of “Results Only Medicine” (as determined by patients) in 2008? See what you think.

Ted Eytan, MD