Acronyms, Placebos and Doctors

Acronyms, Placebos and Doctors

A few years ago my wife Sandra was the administrator of a medium-sized health care facility in the town where we lived. It was common for the doctors to socialize in the same circle as my wife and me because of her management of the facility.

There were five full-time doctors of various specialties, two nurse practitioners, and a physician’s assistant headquartered in the facility. Several other specialists held office hours on a satellite basis one day each week. Whether or not I wanted it, simply because it was my wife’s work world, I absorbed by osmosis much of the medical language that was spoken around me. Sometimes when a group of medical professionals were gathered, I heard so many medical terms and acronyms that it nearly made my head swim.

          Many folks do not understand the medical world of super bills, CPT codes, and all the many other terms that doctors and other medical personnel use most of the time as they go about their medical business. Most of us have now heard of UTI (urinary tract infection), AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), and now even SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), but why have we suddenly learned to shortcut the names of these particular diseases when there are so many others that could use a darn good shortening? To shorten how we call some of these diseases, I would suggest the following acronyms in parentheses for diseases like the Whooping Cough (WhC), Rheumatic Fever (RhF), Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), Pancreatic Cancer (PaC), Abdominal Cystic Lymphangioma (ACL), Basilar Artery Migraines (BAM), Camptomelic Syndrome (CaS), Darier’s Disease (DaD), Davenport Donlan Syndrome (DDS), Fallot Tetralogy (FaT), and the list goes on and on practically forever. Should there be more than a single disease with the same first initial, a second initial could be added either in the first or second part of the name. For instance, an example for Rheumatic Fever might be Rfe, or if that one is already taken, perhaps RhF, as depicted previously.

          Wouldn’t it make sense for the doctors and other medical professionals to complete the mystery and talk one hundred percent in medical terms we absolutely can’t understand? They are well along the way as it is.

          I suggested to my wife that she should pass these ideas along to the doctors in her staff meetings, but she rejected the idea as being too radical and revolutionary. I believe she truly meant it was more because the doctors wouldn’t listen anyway, especially since a nonmember of their fraternity could not possibly have a decent idea that could work.

          I also suggested a few more acronyms for use by the doctors. Most people know that doctors prescribe placebos for mystery and/or unknown ailments of the human body and/or mind. When a doctor cannot diagnose a patient’s medical condition, he or she has two alternatives to select from, depending on their best judgment at the time of the office visit. Should a patient suggest he or she is suffering from an ailment that is foreign to the doctor’s knowledge base, he or she may refer the patient on to a specialist in the field, thereby losing a fair amount of office and personal cash flow income. However, before doing so, the doctor may elect to treat the patient with a best-guess methodology to ensure decent cash flow, at least for a minimum of six office visits. Should the patient seem to be a chronic hypochondriac, the doctor may simply prescribe a placebo, which in many cases either cures the ailment completely or will cause a sudden drastic improvement. This is sometimes a preferred method because it ensures many, many office calls for follow-up consultations to see how effective a placebo is to the patient’s problem. Sometimes a doctor will discover that a combination of placebos works even better, which provides even more cash flow and results in the ability of the doctor to move up from a Buick to a Mercedes or even a Porsche.

Some examples of these imaginary ailments and their acronyms might include items from the following list, any of which could make a doctor very wealthy if properly nurtured:

Ordinary Chest Pain – OCP

Left Leg Pain – LLPS (left leg pain syndrome)

Right Leg Pain – RLPS (right leg pain syndrome)

Unknown Internal Organ Quirk - IOQ (internal organ quirk)

Unknown External Limb Pain – ELQ (external limb quirk)

Common Headache – CHA

Common Backache – CBA

Heart Burn – HEB

One can only imagine how rich a doctor might become if he or she would shorten all of these ailment names to short acronyms. That would allow much more rapid patient turnover, which in turn increases cash flow dramatically.

          The next time you see a doctor drive into the hospital parking lot in his or her Mercedes of Porsche, you may stop and wonder if placebo patients made it possible for the mode of transportation being driven, or if in fact it could be due to the rapid flow rate of patients in from the waiting room and through the doctor’s office visit, primarily caused by the extensive use of these new acronyms.

Paul R. Meredith

1997