Episode 6 - Too Little, Too Late: Practicing Medicine at a Rural Hospital

In this episode, we hear from Elisha about his move to a small rural community in Kansas to become the town’s hospitalist. While there, Elisha gets to exercise his medical skill autonomy — for better or worse — where there are few of the resources that larger city hospitals have.

Because the hospital in Parsons, Kan. has so few staff physicians and clinical resources, Elisha is forced to lean on a standard procedure in many rural hospitals: Bringing in relief doctors from elsewhere to cover the hospital any time a local hospitalist cannot work, such as on nights, or weekends.

On his return to the hospital, Elisha finds a patient nearing death due to the gross negligence of the physician who had been covering the hospital and is faced with the reality that he cannot stop this physician from being brought on again and again at other hospitals across the nation.

Elisha also encounters problems with the fractured healthcare system that can make it extremely difficult to transfer a patient in need to a more robust facility.

Constantly faced with situations where the facility and staff are not able to serve patients with the level of care they need, the time in Parsons wears on Elisha, and ultimately ends up being a short chapter in his early professional life before he moves to the opposite end of the spectrum of care in Seattle, Washington. More on that next week…

Watch or listen in to get a peak behind the curtain of what really goes into becoming a doctor in America and how that influences the healthcare the American public actually receives.

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Credits:

Dr. Elisha Yaghmai, M.D. - Host, Executive Producer

Jo O'Hanlon - Host, Set Design, Producer

Monica Salmeron - Director, Producer

Ben Laffen - Videographer

Austin Engler - Video Editor

Harmony Marketing - Marketing & Production

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Dear Healthcare, It’s You — A new podcast investigating the broken U.S. Healthcare system.

Why is it failing? How are you getting screwed over? Who is profiting? How can it change?

Season 1 starts off with internal medicine physician Dr. Elisha Yaghmai's story. As a medical student and beyond, Elisha begins to discover the systemic toxicity & failings of the US healthcare model and those discoveries have shaped his life's work and purpose: To find a better way.

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Available on YouTube and major podcast platforms.