A process server rang Jordan Grumet's doorbell at 8 p.m. while he watched TV with his kids. The case had almost nothing to do with him. Grumet, an internal medicine physician who wrote The Healthcare Heist, spent five years in it before the lawyer admitted he had only been leverage. He left practice, and now argues doctors and patients are the only two people not taking money out of health care, and the only two who can change it.

⏱️ Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:33 The stressor he leaves out when he explains why he quit
1:34 A process server at the door for a case that was not his
2:44 Why knowing you did nothing wrong makes the anxiety worse
4:23 The sentinel event that ended a career he was good at
5:23 The patients and staff nobody counts when a doctor leaves
7:25 Defensive medicine costs more than the payouts do
7:46 Why being sued leaves doctors with a version of PTSD
9:32 Who has their hands in the cookie jar
10:31 Why real change needs a story, not a bill
12:19 Your doctor used to live in your neighborhood
13:37 We tell patients what we know, never who we are
14:39 How to tell your story without breaking patient privacy
17:10 Business entities do not take the Hippocratic Oath
18:49 Take home messages

About this episode:
Jordan Grumet is an internal medicine physician who spent five years inside a malpractice suit he was never really part of, and who eventually walked away from clinical practice. He tells Kevin Pho about the process server who arrived at his door at 8 p.m., the lawyer who later admitted he had only been leverage against a nursing home, and the two elderly patients who died within a month or two of him leaving his practice. He walks through the numbers he has found on the scale of the problem: by age 55 something like 50 to 60 percent of doctors have been sued, most suits are dropped before they reach court, and the best study he could find, from the early 2000s, put defensive medicine at roughly $55 billion a year against about $40 billion actually paid out. From there the conversation opens into the argument of his book, The Healthcare Heist. Insurers, pharmaceutical companies, private equity, venture capital, electronic medical record vendors and malpractice attorneys all have a hand in the cookie jar, while doctors and patients, the only two groups who give and receive care, are kept fighting each other. Grumet traces that split to what he calls the intimacy gap, the distance that opened once physicians stopped living in the communities they served, and his proposed remedy is shared storytelling: doctors telling patients not only what they know but who they are, through social media, writing, advocacy and shows like The Pitt. He warns that once practices moved to private equity and venture capital ownership, business entities that never took the Hippocratic Oath began making clinical decisions. He closes with three things patients can do this week: choose a doctor in private practice, ask for the generic, and appeal every denial.

📘 The Healthcare Heist: How Physicians and Patients Can Unite to Transform Health Care: https://amzn.to/3RFqPxh

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