Care, not profits, should be priority

I congratulate Dr. Lee Birchansky for his commitment to providing quality care to his patients while minimizing expense to taxpayers.

Delivering a quality service and saving Medicare $3 million in three years should be commended. Instead, he is fined $20,000 (“Seeing things differently,” March 6).

This is another example of big government/big hospital/big insurance interfering with the delivery of quality care by doctors who truly place patient care (not profits) as their highest priority. Is it any wonder why our health care system is such a mess?

The Minnesota ophthalmologist hired by the state to testify against Birchansky stated that cataract surgery must be performed in a sterile environment and a doctor's office is not typically sterile. This absurd assertion is an insult to Birchansky, since his state-of-the-art operatories are accredited by the AAAASF (American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities) and held to the same standards as a hospital. Any invasive surgery requires a sterile environment. Is a cataract procedure any more infection prone than oral surgery, vasectomies or other surgical procedures performed in offices? The most life-threatening nosocomial infections occur in hospitals, not doctor's offices.

It is hard to ignore the irony of our hospitals arguing against the duplication of services in this case, while each one is simultaneously spending millions building its own cancer center, newborn intensive care unit and heart care center a half mile away from each other.

David Gehring

Toddville