Dr. Perry Henderson talks about healthcare reform
People are not robots
People are not robots
Henderson is all for the creation of financial efficiencies and the matching of medical training levels — and costs — to the task at hand. But, in Henderson’
s view, these should be used to enhance the medical experience of the patient. “We can’t lose the personalization of the doctor-patient relationship,” Henderson
emphasized. “We’re not robots that have a screw loose somewhere that needs to be fixed. We are people. And that always has to be taken into consideration.”
A cornerstone O President Barack Obama’s stimulus package and healthcare reform initiative is the computerization of medical records. Although he recognizes
that it will be a monumental task, Henderson is all in favor of that for a number of reasons. First of all, he feels it will save lives. “It’s going to eliminate some errors
in doctors’ orders to nurses and doctors’ prescriptions,” Henderson observed. “We all know that doctors can’t write. I’ve seen some prescriptions where I wonder how
in the world the pharmacist can make them out.”
It will also make patient histories more accurate because details that are lost to aging minds will be preserved. “UW Hospital is one that is computerizing its
records,” Henderson said. “So the doctor is in front of a computer and can say ‘Oh yeah, you had such and such a thing. That was in 2005.’ That’s good. That’s
something that ought to be done.”
It can also create efficiencies in the process because information will not have to be recorded time after time. “My daughter made an emergency room
visit,” Henderson said. “She had to come in and the clerk had to register her, tag her and all of this. Then she went over and the nurse had to sit down and take a
quick history on why she was there and this sort of thing. This is the emergency room of the hospital where her records were. Then we went back to the little
cubicle. We were there for about 20 minutes before someone else came in. They took her blood pressure and drew some blood. It was over an hour before the
person came in who introduced himself as the emergency room physician. Once again, he took a brief history and said ‘Let’s see what your blood test said and
who is your physician? Maybe I need to call him.’ So he left and came back around 40 minutes later. It was a four hour visit in an emergency room. Now we didn’
t go in there with a broken arm or a heart attack. But still, it was a long time.”
As a physician, Henderson resented — and felt it was counterproductive — to treat the patient-doctor visit and relationship as if it was part of an assembly
line where doctors were expected to see seven patients an hour almost regardless of presenting conditions. It was the human interaction between patient and
doctor that allowed the doctor to get the best understanding of the patient’s needs.
“Somewhere along the line, I heard we were supposed to see seven patients an hour,” Henderson recalled. “That was actually embraced just about the time
I was retiring. I commented on the doctors who go through their patient visit in 6-7 minutes. ‘Okay, here’s your prescription.’ Then as they are walking out the
door, the physician has their hand on the doorknob and looks over their shoulder and say ‘Any questions?’ I served in a passive aggressive way. When I had a new
patient come in — I’m a gynecologist — I insisted the nurse have her sit at my desk fully clothed when I came in to take her history. When I left the room, she
undressed while I jotted the history down. I went back in, examined her and then left the room again while she got dressed and formulated what I was going to
do. I went in there again while she was fully dressed and discussed what we found. At the end, I would do just what I am doing now. I would put my pencil down,
sit back in my chair, look her in the eye and say ‘Do you have any questions?’ I did that with one woman who came in for a routine GYN check-up. I had
delivered 2-3 of her babies. The last time I had seen her was three years before that. She was fine. There were no health problems. I asked her if she had any
questions. She said ‘You say I’m fine. But why do I feel so awful?’ She proceeded to tell me about all of the problems she had with her three little crumb
snatchers and this, that and the other. It went on for 15 minutes. We ended up getting an emergency psychiatric consultation for her. Seriously! The psychiatrist
saw her and he got things taken care of. But if I had asked if there were any questions as I was leaving out of the room, she wouldn’t have said anything, gone
home and who knows what would have happened.”
One of the biggest problems that Henderson has with the American healthcare system is that it tends to discourage preventative medicine and ends up
causing more expensive emergency room visits. “Our infant mortality rate is something like 26th,” Henderson observed. “A lot of it has to do with preventative
care, especially from the perspective of my specialty obstetrics. Women who don’t get pre-natal care and show up to have the baby have all sorts of
complications. And the babies have complications. If they get pre-natal care, you can prevent a lot of these things so you end up with healthy babies. The same
thing goes with other things. If you go to the physician and they check your cholesterol and they tell you that you need some cholesterol lowering drugs or you
have to treat that hypertension is a lot better than trying to treat a heart attack when the person comes in two years later. Or maybe he doesn’t make it in because
he has one of those heart attacks that carry him away right away. Preventative care is why some of these other countries that have some form of socialized
medicine — Sweden, Norway and Canada — have better health. There are trade-offs. They talk about if you do that, you have to wait in line for this, that and
the other, well how do you explain the four hour emergency room visit?”
There are other things like a lack of doctors, the bidding for available talent contributing to escalating physicians costs and the overuse of high-priced
technology that Henderson feels contribute to the high price tag of healthcare. But he is also concerned that if medicine is just a business, it can attract people
whose driving force has nothing to do with medicine.
Henderson related a story about an obstetrician he knew who was overly concerned about what medicine was going to do for him and the money he was
going to earn. “My wife went to him for our second child,” Henderson said. “People were sitting around in a crowded waiting room. He came bustling in. He was
always running late in seeing patients. Well I knew he was bustling in because he was tied up on the golf course. They tolerated it because they assumed he was
at the hospital taking care of patients rather than the office. And when they are in labor, they wanted him in the hospital.”
For Henderson, healthcare is about — and always should be — service to humanity and that regard should always be of utmost importance.
s view, these should be used to enhance the medical experience of the patient. “We can’t lose the personalization of the doctor-patient relationship,” Henderson
emphasized. “We’re not robots that have a screw loose somewhere that needs to be fixed. We are people. And that always has to be taken into consideration.”
A cornerstone O President Barack Obama’s stimulus package and healthcare reform initiative is the computerization of medical records. Although he recognizes
that it will be a monumental task, Henderson is all in favor of that for a number of reasons. First of all, he feels it will save lives. “It’s going to eliminate some errors
in doctors’ orders to nurses and doctors’ prescriptions,” Henderson observed. “We all know that doctors can’t write. I’ve seen some prescriptions where I wonder how
in the world the pharmacist can make them out.”
It will also make patient histories more accurate because details that are lost to aging minds will be preserved. “UW Hospital is one that is computerizing its
records,” Henderson said. “So the doctor is in front of a computer and can say ‘Oh yeah, you had such and such a thing. That was in 2005.’ That’s good. That’s
something that ought to be done.”
It can also create efficiencies in the process because information will not have to be recorded time after time. “My daughter made an emergency room
visit,” Henderson said. “She had to come in and the clerk had to register her, tag her and all of this. Then she went over and the nurse had to sit down and take a
quick history on why she was there and this sort of thing. This is the emergency room of the hospital where her records were. Then we went back to the little
cubicle. We were there for about 20 minutes before someone else came in. They took her blood pressure and drew some blood. It was over an hour before the
person came in who introduced himself as the emergency room physician. Once again, he took a brief history and said ‘Let’s see what your blood test said and
who is your physician? Maybe I need to call him.’ So he left and came back around 40 minutes later. It was a four hour visit in an emergency room. Now we didn’
t go in there with a broken arm or a heart attack. But still, it was a long time.”
As a physician, Henderson resented — and felt it was counterproductive — to treat the patient-doctor visit and relationship as if it was part of an assembly
line where doctors were expected to see seven patients an hour almost regardless of presenting conditions. It was the human interaction between patient and
doctor that allowed the doctor to get the best understanding of the patient’s needs.
“Somewhere along the line, I heard we were supposed to see seven patients an hour,” Henderson recalled. “That was actually embraced just about the time
I was retiring. I commented on the doctors who go through their patient visit in 6-7 minutes. ‘Okay, here’s your prescription.’ Then as they are walking out the
door, the physician has their hand on the doorknob and looks over their shoulder and say ‘Any questions?’ I served in a passive aggressive way. When I had a new
patient come in — I’m a gynecologist — I insisted the nurse have her sit at my desk fully clothed when I came in to take her history. When I left the room, she
undressed while I jotted the history down. I went back in, examined her and then left the room again while she got dressed and formulated what I was going to
do. I went in there again while she was fully dressed and discussed what we found. At the end, I would do just what I am doing now. I would put my pencil down,
sit back in my chair, look her in the eye and say ‘Do you have any questions?’ I did that with one woman who came in for a routine GYN check-up. I had
delivered 2-3 of her babies. The last time I had seen her was three years before that. She was fine. There were no health problems. I asked her if she had any
questions. She said ‘You say I’m fine. But why do I feel so awful?’ She proceeded to tell me about all of the problems she had with her three little crumb
snatchers and this, that and the other. It went on for 15 minutes. We ended up getting an emergency psychiatric consultation for her. Seriously! The psychiatrist
saw her and he got things taken care of. But if I had asked if there were any questions as I was leaving out of the room, she wouldn’t have said anything, gone
home and who knows what would have happened.”
One of the biggest problems that Henderson has with the American healthcare system is that it tends to discourage preventative medicine and ends up
causing more expensive emergency room visits. “Our infant mortality rate is something like 26th,” Henderson observed. “A lot of it has to do with preventative
care, especially from the perspective of my specialty obstetrics. Women who don’t get pre-natal care and show up to have the baby have all sorts of
complications. And the babies have complications. If they get pre-natal care, you can prevent a lot of these things so you end up with healthy babies. The same
thing goes with other things. If you go to the physician and they check your cholesterol and they tell you that you need some cholesterol lowering drugs or you
have to treat that hypertension is a lot better than trying to treat a heart attack when the person comes in two years later. Or maybe he doesn’t make it in because
he has one of those heart attacks that carry him away right away. Preventative care is why some of these other countries that have some form of socialized
medicine — Sweden, Norway and Canada — have better health. There are trade-offs. They talk about if you do that, you have to wait in line for this, that and
the other, well how do you explain the four hour emergency room visit?”
There are other things like a lack of doctors, the bidding for available talent contributing to escalating physicians costs and the overuse of high-priced
technology that Henderson feels contribute to the high price tag of healthcare. But he is also concerned that if medicine is just a business, it can attract people
whose driving force has nothing to do with medicine.
Henderson related a story about an obstetrician he knew who was overly concerned about what medicine was going to do for him and the money he was
going to earn. “My wife went to him for our second child,” Henderson said. “People were sitting around in a crowded waiting room. He came bustling in. He was
always running late in seeing patients. Well I knew he was bustling in because he was tied up on the golf course. They tolerated it because they assumed he was
at the hospital taking care of patients rather than the office. And when they are in labor, they wanted him in the hospital.”
For Henderson, healthcare is about — and always should be — service to humanity and that regard should always be of utmost importance.
| Dr. Perry Henderson retired from the UW Medical School and his obstetrics practice in 1997. |
By Jonathan Gramling
Dr. Perry Henderson is an altruistic soul. Since retiring from medicine in 1997 — he allowed his
medical license to expire — Henderson has immersed himself in working with three organizations:
Madison Downtown Rotary, 100 Black Men and The Perinatal Foundation he helped found. It’s a
continuation of service that led him into the medical profession. Henderson was a professor of obstetrics
and gynecology at the UW-Madison Medical School. Through a part-time obstetrics practice, Henderson
kept in touch with the every day realities of the field and delivered approximately 3,000 babies, about
the equivalent to the population of Cross Plains.
It is his heart — coupled with his talent and intelligence — that led him into the medical field like
so many before and after him. Near the end of his medical career, he saw things begin to change in the
medical field. “The University was marching into the health maintenance organization,” Henderson
recalled in an interview in his Fitchburg home. “And this high-powered administrator from somewhere
was speaking to 300 physicians and commented that they didn’t know anything about managed care.
This was after we had been supposedly being oriented for several weeks. He said ‘You don’t know
anything about managed care. You’re too busy taking care of patients.’ I thought about getting up and
walking out.”
Dr. Perry Henderson is an altruistic soul. Since retiring from medicine in 1997 — he allowed his
medical license to expire — Henderson has immersed himself in working with three organizations:
Madison Downtown Rotary, 100 Black Men and The Perinatal Foundation he helped found. It’s a
continuation of service that led him into the medical profession. Henderson was a professor of obstetrics
and gynecology at the UW-Madison Medical School. Through a part-time obstetrics practice, Henderson
kept in touch with the every day realities of the field and delivered approximately 3,000 babies, about
the equivalent to the population of Cross Plains.
It is his heart — coupled with his talent and intelligence — that led him into the medical field like
so many before and after him. Near the end of his medical career, he saw things begin to change in the
medical field. “The University was marching into the health maintenance organization,” Henderson
recalled in an interview in his Fitchburg home. “And this high-powered administrator from somewhere
was speaking to 300 physicians and commented that they didn’t know anything about managed care.
This was after we had been supposedly being oriented for several weeks. He said ‘You don’t know
anything about managed care. You’re too busy taking care of patients.’ I thought about getting up and
walking out.”