In my effort to provide timely care for patients, I often end up treating them in some very unusual places. I recently shared a visit I held in the DMV waiting room. When I queried my colleagues on the topic, I learned that many had examined patients in a variety of unusual places including:

• Parking lot at shopping mall inside car
• Doctor’s dining room table
• Hospital hallway
• Under a tree in a meadow
• Airplane galley
• Baseball games

Here’s my latest addition to the list:

In a recent NYT article, Abraham Verghese, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, relates:

‘This computer record creates what I call an “iPatient” — and this iPatient threatens to become the real focus of our attention, while the real patient in the bed often feels neglected, a mere placeholder for the virtual record.”

One thing that always unnerves me about modern medical clinics is the buzzing and beeping of gadgets telling us what to do next. While all eyes are on the computer screens, patients are cowering in the corner of the room. With sanitizing hand gel on every counter, one wonders if it is even safe to touch people.

When citizens are asked to dream their “ideal clinic” they describe a sanctuary, a safe place. Listen to their words. Patients want to be touched, hugged. They want to feel warm, nurtured, loved, and important. . .

Interestingly, there are never requests for more technology.

Can we depend upon government-supported health care? As federal and state governments stagger under huge deficits and payments from entitlement programs such as Medicaid and Medicare are being cut back, what’s a hospital to do?

Put patients in charge.

Read full story in Becker’s Hospital Review.

Early in my career an elderly woman presented to establish care. When I discovered she was suffering from a urinary tract infection, I reviewed all her treatment options from natural remedies to antibiotics. When I stopped talking, she looked straight at me and said, “What’s the matter, Honey? Don’t you know what you are doing?”

The truth is I do not always know what I am doing. In that case I did, but I realized that patients back in the day preferred a patriarchal, just-take-this-pill approach to medicine. Today patients want to discuss their options.

Now, I believe, people want a real doctor.

What’s YOUR fantasy? More and more doctors are putting patients in charge of designing their ideal health-care experience. Share your wildest dreams and I’ll do my best to bring them to life. Promise!