More On the "Call for Comments" and Here's One From JD Salinger's Fat Lady

The Disease Management Care Blog has gotten some terrific one sentence 'messages' in response to its "call for comments" to share at an upcoming U.S. medical school lecture. If your submission has not appeared anywhere among the DMCB's vast array of web portals, fear not: it's in there. Your comments are being compiled with others, dropped into PowerPoint and will likely appear in a future DMCB posting.

Comments are still being accepted through early next week. This is your chance to educate, impress and influence a roomful of future doctors. Posts here, email, tweet, Facebook and LinkedIn are all accepted.

By the way, the DMCB is **NOT** going to teach about, let alone mention, "disease management." Rather, the lecture will deal with various approaches to health care financing and risk transfer.

The DMCB is planning to conclude the lecture with a comment that touches on a favorite topic borrowed from J.D. Salinger's literary masterpiece Franny and Zooey. That would be the "Fat Lady," or how contemplation, reverence, submission and service can can light up the universe that lingers just beyond the reach of rational thought. This is the astonishing insight from brother Zooey that pulls the gifted radio star Franny Glass out of her nihilistic funk.

Physicians are especially privileged because they have a leg up on discovering their own personal Fat Lady. She exists in every patient and she calls to us. And she is now telling us that, while diagnosis and treatment are still "Job One," we docs are also being called to apply new skills in reconciling ethics, financing, public health, health literacy, lifestyle issues, socioeconomic status and third party meddling:

Zooey's explanation to Franny:

[I was told] to shine my shoes...I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them... I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he [had a] ... look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again -- This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and -- I don't know. Anyway, it seemed goddamn clear why [I had to] shine my shoes when I went on the air. It made sense.

And now the Fat Lady is telling physicians that while morons abound, understanding the principles underlying risk transfer and how insurance works is important because will help you get your patients the care that they need. In other words, knowing how and why health care services are financed and what can be done about it at the individual patient level is no longer the job of that lady sitting on that porch.

Here's the DMCB comment: Docs need to shine those shoes.