I am not a chicken

One of my favorite books is ‘Orbiting the Giant Hairball‘ by Gordon MacKenzie. Subtitled “A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace,” my favorite chapter is titled ‘A Chicken’s Fate’. In it, the author described his fathers’ discovery that chickens can be mesmerized: The cousin led the way to the ramshackle chicken coop out behind the farmhouse. There he selected a fine white hen. He carried her under his arm to the front of the house, produced a piece of chalk and drew a short line on the porch. He stood the creature over the chalk line and held her beak to it. After a moment or so, the boy slowly removed his hands. The chicken stood motionless, beak to the chalk line, hypnotized….[snip]…Before long, the hen house was empty, and the front porch was filled with 70 or so dead-silent, stark-still chickens straddling chalk lines, beaks seemingly glued to the porch. Don’t believe it? Seeing is believing. What are some examples? Hospitals buying bad health IT and forcing me (contractually) to use it. Governments checking up on me to make sure I give antibiotics on time, keep patients warm, put in a central line in the way they think is best. Governments threatening me with jail time if someone who works for me makes an error on a bill, paying me less if I refuse to use bad health IT. The threat of lawyers combing my charts to make me look like a bad doctor. Other people are drawing white lines on the...
Source: Waking Up Costs - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Anesthesia Medicine Source Type: blogs