He is a direct observer of medical care and represents no outside group. One of his nicknames is Hospital Cop. We don't have any nuances for what we do for patients, because they're Aetna U.S. Healthcare members that a doctor wouldn't want to do for everybody else he takes care of. What was once a position of great trust with teacher-like authority has rolled downhill into the rat infested caverns of greed. Medical Directors are critically needed by all of the health armies of the good and the bad.
Every state law prohibits any entity except a licensed professional from practicing medicine.
But to practice medicine through a Medical Director and his supplicants and slaves, well, that is a different matter. The problem, as one HMO consultant wondered in his book, is how to reward the Medical Director as a management executive with perks but yet convince other physicians being managed that they are still talking to a colleague, one still holding out trust to the public. I was unfortunately spoiled in my residency training to serve under a great medical director. Well, it didn't work. My chief was a great Medical Director, because he was a great teacher first.