Word: billig
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Your story on Navy Surgeon Commander Donal Billig [MEDICINE, March 3] focuses attention on "widespread deficiencies in the nation's military health care system." There is a more insidious problem: physicians will not pass judgment on colleagues. Billig was fired from two private-sector positions before he went to Bethesda. But he could have found another job in a private hospital and still be practicing. The lesson to be learned from this episode reflects not just on the military but on the entire medical community. Joyce Gelfond, M.D. San Antonio...
Your assertion that military medicine was on trial is correct. However, one fact that has been ignored is that Bethesda Naval Hospital rescinded Commander Billig's credentials in November 1984 on the basis of its own internal quality assessment. This was well over a year ago, and our system for monitoring the appropriateness of care in the hospital has continued to progress throughout that time. Edward S. Amis Jr. Commanding Officer Naval Hospital Bethesda...
...your report on Commander Billig, you compare a military surgeon's salary of $70,000 with the $240,000 gross income of a surgeon in private practice. The comparison is misleading. A private surgeon must pay for his office, the salaries of his personnel, his equipment, his insurance and his own retirement plan, all of which are provided by the military for its physicians. It may be difficult for the military to attract doctors, but not because of salary. Carie D. Buckley III, M.D. Staunton, Va. Shcharansky's Survival...