The Works of Mark EdgemonTHE BED SIDE MANOR
The Works of Mark Edgemon from All-Creatures.org

Mark Edgemon has been writing for 30 years. He writes and publishes short stories, articles, poetry and scripts, as well as, produces audio comedy productions for over 700 radio stations nationwide.

Contact Mark through his website, Creator and the Catalyst.

THE BED SIDE MANOR

A physician of some renown devised a system, where he could see 150 patients a day by scheduling 4 at a time in 15-minute intervals. A simple plan by design and simple to administrate, if his interest was becoming wealthy and not giving a damn for the hundreds of people, who were on the receiving end of his lack of concern.

With 4 waiting rooms and a nurse who acted as his traffic coordinator, 4 patients would be brought in every 15 minutes. The nurse would take their temperature, weigh them, take their blood pressure and draw some blood for tests, whether they were sick with a cold or dying from cancer. It didn’t matter to him; Medicare paid the same for each patient, so the more he could herd in, the more money he could bill out at the end of the month.

He would spend from 30 seconds to 2 minutes with each patient and then they were whisked out of the examining rooms, whether they were correctly diagnosed or not.

People began to die under his care, but fortunately for him, they died from their diseases and not malpractice, so he couldn’t be held liable for their deaths in court.

He loved his job. He worked 4 days a week from 9 to 5 and played golf on Fridays. Yes, this was the life!

It is expected in a fable such as this, for some evil to befall this uncaring, money grubbing doctor, but nothing ever did. He bought an old Victorian style bed and breakfast and turned it into a mansion. He ran through 3 wives, drank himself to sleep every night (to keep his conscience at bay) and paid out half his money in alimony to angry ex-wives who wished him dead!

Wait a minute! This can’t be good! Well, all right then, I guess he didn’t have it made…after all.

Moral: Treating people in an uncaring manor will have a boomerang effect!

Copyright © 2008 Mark Edgemon

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