Show america s first cooperative hospital money loney mad doctors dr michael shadid director tells the facts to E L stowe of the true story magazine A story that should interest every resident of san juan county at this time when cooperative health program Is being promoted v continued Continue i from last week within an hour an infant boy was yelling and kicking fat pink feet at the ceiling and myra lay between snowy sheets in a bed more comfortable I 1 imagine than any she had ever known in the waiting room I 1 espied joe hi his s face wrinkled in a smile passing out nickel cigars even to the women insisting they take some for their now this is a cooperative hospital the only cooperative hospital in the united states physically it is like any up to the minute city institution nurses pass briskly down the corridors sick people sit propped up in high beds there is and odor of antiseptic in the air and you hear a baby crying but in spirit and method it is like no other the patients actually own it in the years 1930 and 1931 1 I conceived the idea for such a hospital and I 1 made an appeal in re joe wilson and 2000 other farmers sharecroppers share croppers and small town business men chipped in fifty dollars apiece with this money we built and equipped the ho p tal three times since the doors opened for patients in 1932 we have had bad to enlarge it the people own it as they own the clothes they wear they operate it as they operate their own cars they do not tell the doctors what to do or how to do it but 1 I as medical director dil 1 am responsible to the trustees they choose and responsible to me are the eight doctors and the staff of nurses so when the people of western oklahoma talk of their own hospital they are stating the plain truth the great advantage of a cooperative hospital is that it brings modern medical service within the rah rp h of people who have never wj BJ able to afford it it gives j d a better brand of medical service because the physicians are all on a salary and can do their lobs undistracted and unworried by y the thought of making money finally a hospital that is their own is one they can have faith in and the most timorous enter its doors with the feeling that is a place where they will be well taken care of maternity cases naturally are only a small part of our work last year we had more than 2000 bed cases well over half of them surgical they covered most of the ailments human beings contact from whooping cough to gall stones we operated only when it was necessary our two chair dental clinic and those devoted to eye ear nose and throat cases were busy all the time r example you have only to I 1 k the corridors or in the wt tig room some one is sure to tell you of his experience on the operating table billy ruddy who grows kaffir corn will sooner or later tell you about his appena appendicitis di in much these words there I 1 was sitting on the mowing mac machine hine when suddenly I 1 felt a sting of pain in my right side the last I 1 knew when my wife found me I 1 was out cold I 1 weigh two hundred and fifteen pounds and I 1 dont know how they did it but she and the girl managed to get me into the car and drive me seven ty eight miles to elk city ten days in bed all fixed up and what do you think my bill was twenty eight dollars that is all my brother had his out last year in a private doctors place and he got a bill f for or three hundred and fifteen dollars hes still paying it I 1 repeat this story because it is typical t for twenty four dollars a year paid in advance a family of four or more we have one of fifteen gets all the medical attention it needs singly or all together the troop may come to the hospital every day and they will receive medical attention we insist upon at least two complete examinations a year and we insist on vaccinating cina ting against smallpox and diphtheria we teach them diet and cleanliness and care of the teeth and when we detect lymp toms that may develop into a serious disease we follow through and see to it that the patient takes the necessary precautions dental X rays and tooth extractions are free for fillings bridges plates etc we charge but little enough to bring the service within the means of our poorest patients recently we had a woman patient a sufferer from arthritis in the hospital for fifty seven days her bill for a highly complicated set of treatments from two physicians came to sixty eight dollars A hotel would have charged more it was an interesting case she was taken sick in california and her husband drove two thousand miles the distance back to ell elk city oklahoma so that she might get treatment from doctors she believed in she collapsed at the hospital gate and had to be carried to her room we also operate a pharmacy which compiles prescriptions at forty per cent less than the charge made at an ordinary drug store with the advantage that the doctors who write them supervise s the filling sombat so that the patient gets exactly what was prescribed people who receive this service appreciate it profoundly they love their hospital they are proud of it grateful for what it has done for them this alone is payment to me for the sacrifices I 1 have made for my struggle to bring it into being the he hospital was my idea my dream I 1 should say born out of years of medical practice practice for profit I 1 saw thousands suffering going through life deformed and dying not because science know what to do turn to page 13 column ong one AMERICAS FIRST cooperative HOSPITAL spital continued from firt first page about their caes caes but dimply b bp baue the patients have the cs cash to pay doctors bills this y was as wrong and out of my belief alt it was wrong an and I 1 evil to deny care to people because of money grew the notion that it could be shed by mass mars action hi ba operation lit let me tell a little of my own story not because I 1 am especially ally proud of it but only toy for Us its relation to the cooperative hospital I 1 started life poor I 1 knew what it was to be hungry I 1 peddled cheap jewelry froni from door to door in order to pay my way through college I 1 studied med medicine at washington washing torl college in st louis and never knew what it was to have a vacation because I 1 war obliged to bend chend every hour of leisure earning money in 1919 1 I opened an off odice ice in in elk city people liked me and ancl pretty soon coon I 1 had an ex excelled cellen pr noting thi th absence of hospitals I 1 established one f ny y own in i an eight room lo 10 loft ft ae ae a store on the main street and ana I 1 did well I 1 have my income tax returns for the six years ending with 1930 to show I 1 earned from to a year I 1 charged modest f fees ees but I 1 had a great many patients they came to me because I 1 aid did my job thoroughly and conscientiously however I 1 did not work very hard for my money I 1 worked when I 1 pleased and w when lie n I 1 like a certain kind of work I 1 did not do it I 1 was practicing medicine k for profit and my own personal advancement and like other physicians I 1 charged people according to their ability to pay I 1 took two months vacation every year one year I 1 took five and nd toured europe asia and africa I 1 had a beautiful home I 1 put my children through college and despite ell all these expenditures I 1 had stowed away a comfortable sum for my old age but tle tl e greit great satisfactions in life I 1 discovered do not come from the making or ng of money nothing counts in life except the good you can do As a doctor I 1 had seen much to trouble me much that cried for correction why should a pain in the stomach add up a bill for five hundred dollars why should a brief siege of illness involve a family in heavy debt for many years for example here is a line from a letter I 1 have just received from a former patient 1 I feel that my sixty seven days last year in any other hospital would have taken our home As it was the doctors saved my leg and my home too because a man breaks a leg and gangrene sets in does it follow he must pay for the accident with all his possessions 1 knew there were thousands cc 0 o suffered and died because aay went to doctors too late nobody gave them an examination early enough to catch their illness in time to save them one third of all deaths from cancer could be prevented if the victims went to a physician in time kidney trouble tuberculosis heart and arterial disease glaucoma which causes blindness all are curable in their early stages doctors are too busy making money to spend any time in preventing disease only two percent of their time is spent in that direction they are like tradesmen obliged to work for profit they have services to sell and only the sick the truly sick and the sick with money can afford to buy what they have for sale of course many doctors are for r and harried by rent bills U j grocery bills like the rest of and it is a fact that the physicians in the country as a class earn very little A few have huge incomes but more than fiat fifty Y per cent of them make less than fifty dollars a week little wonder then that some of them proceed on the principle of get all you can charge all the traffic will bear get it honestly if you can but get it so it happens that a person with a pain in the stomach has appendicitis if he can pay if he be cannot pay well its simply an old fashioned L bell e I 1 I 1 ya y a c h 0 the well nell to do patient needs heeds a surgical operation the poor man a io e of salts there are extrie of course we are arc obliged to charge for the use of the oeds beds for the anaesthetics aesthetics an are costly for metabolism and other tests these items we give at cost but with these extras the bills when comp compared ared to doctors bills anywhere else are rid culous ly small they never ins include a charge for the physicians physician services not mot long ago a woman came to no ne complaining complain nc ng that something som ehing was wrong with wilh her stomach I 1 examined her and discovered the scars cars of four previous surgical OP op rations rat ons for which she was still laying heavily charge for 11 fo r cams to more than a housand housa nl dollars and fhe he was by 10 0 meana wealthy woman her however was not in the it was a burror of the rain rein you all know of c aises ses ake this F oper er t ons performed formed because of f faulty aulty dia diagnosis gnoss because a surgeon was in the mood for a fat fee they are the result of system under which doctors ar are e compelled to practice medicine for profit sickness and death should be to nob odys personal advantage no one should be in a position to profit by the suffering of others I 1 asked myself what could be do done n e what scheme I 1 might devise so that it might be to the doctors advantage vantage to have his patient recover quickly how could it pay a surgeon to perform fewer operations how could a dentist benefit by better teeth in the community in 1929 just about the time the country dropped into the pit of the depression I 1 had my idea with a pencil and paper I 1 did some figuring and I 1 worked out my dream of organizing a cooperative hoz hospital pital owned by the patients maintained by a yearly fee a hospital where doctors were on a salary and could work as honest sincere professional men I 1 was vas sure that this was the way out and in my first enthusiasm I 1 carried it to my fellow physicians in elk city I 1 proposed that we turn our private hospitals over to the ides idea they did scoff they told me that the idea would never work A few nights later I 1 called a meeting of five men who knew about cooperative business one was the head bead of a cooperative lumber yard another directed a cooperative grocery and a third ran a couple of cooperative cotton gins they saw the idea at once they began citing instances of people in debt to doctors we formed a committee and moved into action I 1 was fifty years old I 1 was prosperous in a year or two I 1 would be ready to retire yet here I 1 was embarked on a venture that might destroy all I 1 had built up we recruited other workers and we scattered over the hundred mile area of farms and towns that radiates from elk city we went into the cornfields into the cotton patches into the shops and factories if two thousand men would contribute fifty dollars dollar each they could build and equip a hospital they would own it as they had built and owned their lodges and their churches if they had a hospital they could hammer down the high cost of living put down the high cost of doctoring look here said a member of the committee to bill bates as he moved along the row chopping cotton you belong to the farmers union and you buy your feed at the union store you get it cheaper dont you bill agreed well figure it out for yourself if you joined with your neighbors to cut down the cost of doctoring you could get that better and cheaper in exactly the same way crisscross criss cross back and f orth forth across and up and down western oklahoma we drove our cars spreading the message we cajoled we argued we bullied stay out and youre burn lurnig ng your back on oklahoma one man shouted to a farmer say out and youre betraying your wife and children listen SIp suppose pose you should get seriously sick now what would you do ill tell you you either stay at home and suffer or you call a doctor and put yourself in hock for a year maybe lose your farm to pay the bill we discovered very few who were not burdened with such bills A clerk in a small town shoe store earning twenty dollars a week was paying ot off piecemeal a bill for twelve hundred dollars that was no f suit fault of his own his only sin was wa s that nature had endowed him with a weak constitution the more we heard the more convinced we were that we were on the right track I 1 burned my bridges behind me by selling three hundred shares to rny my own patients these three hundred the greater part of my livelihood as a physician became automatically members of the cooperative they could have my services there without charge except for the annual an nual subscription fee f ee As money and pledges rolled in the private physicians began to take us seriously rallying to their side in opposition on to our scheme cherne were the dentists the nurses nurse e ven even the undertakers A letter with a crude drawing of a black hand arrived one morning in the mail it was the first of many threats and worse than threats that I 1 was to receive the committee was meeting in an elk city home one evening not long after that when a volley of revolver bullets crashed into the room we fell flat on our faces fortunately none of us was injured but after that we traveled with guns the committee insisted that I 1 make no move unless accompanied by an armed guard I 1 lent the hospital building fund 1 I turned over to it the equipment of my own private office valued at about the same am ont o nt and we began life as cooperative in the eight rooms that ha hatt been my own medical edical in domain the attacks upon the proposed hospital increased in venom and intensity as we began laying the foundation doctors have a great influence in the community some of them talked the idea down to their pa patients and peoples interest slackened what had got ot off to such suc h a splendid start seemed to be dying and then my opponents en t s made a false move they started action under an obsolete oklahoma statute to have my license revoked after my years of honorable practice in the state they were trying to end my career as a doctor but the only result of the move was that sentiment in my favor revived we were stormed by supporters the farmers union adopted us as a subsidiary organization labor in oklahoma city and tulsa rallied to support me alfalfa bill murray then governor of the state completed the job by telling certain opponents of mine who held public office in language blunt and strong |