Today’s Sunday Extra continues reports on Muskogee Regional Medical Center’s efforts to recruit new doctors.
As today’s report recounts, the hospital operator, Capella Healthcare, has a goal of recruiting 53 physicians over the next five years. The push is necessary because Muskogee has a shortage of doctors, but we also have a number of doctors nearing retirement.
Muskogee residents should be pleased at the recruitment efforts by Capella. The effort already has brought about 10 new hires of hospitalists, “MDs or DOs that specialize in family practice or internal medicine and practice exclusively inpatient medicine.”
The hospital also faces a problem with a few surgeons and emergency room duty, which also has been the subject of several news reports.
Two surgeons are challenging in court their hospital duties and the call schedule at the ER. The judge hearing the case has called for mediation.
We don’t want to oversimplify the differences, but the rift started before Capella arrived and MRMC was a public trust hospital. That disagreement, in part, led to a number of doctors seeking outside financing and constructing a private hospital outside town that will open later this year or early next year that will compete with MRMC.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge over the years between the hospital and local doctors, and the problem carries a lot of emotional baggage. But doctors need hospitals as much as hospitals need doctors, so the doctors should cooperate as much as possible. Capella has made a generous offer to those surgeons who work the ER.
And from a community point of view, and what’s best for the community, is if surgeons are sending their patients to a hospital and using its operating rooms, then those surgeons should put in time in the emergency room.
