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Doctors, lawyers have responsibilities to help others

Ethics Forum. Feb. 4, 2002.

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Scenario: What's the best way to give free help to the public?

This month we asked a physician and a lawyer to share how their professional responsibility to support access for all to medical care and legal representation respectively translates in practice.

Reply:

Nearly 10 years have passed since we closed our private practice to open a free clinic for people without health insurance. Because we desired to do patient care rather than complex grant writing and administration, we chose a different route than most community clinics.

We decided to seek only private support rather than apply for federal, county and city help. This meant seeking funds from private charitable foundations. Most important, it meant appealing to colleagues in the private medical community for help. No one turned us down, and to this day, all participants remain on board. Nearly 150 physicians, a score of nurses, various therapists and medical assistants, four hospitals, three imaging centers and our local medical society all help. To make a good thing great, they do so with cheerfulness and good will.

There is no specific amount of time or percentage of income that medicine teaches health care professionals to give pro bono. We don't think there needs to be, for every doctor and nurse we know wants to give something back to the community. All physicians write off charges or donate time more formally in a variety of settings. The problem is not the will: The desire to give is out there. The problem is the way: There is no mechanism to harness the charity that already exists on a scale large enough to substantially impact the large number of uninsured nationally. [...]