Like many academic institutions and non-profits these days, the American Medical Association (AMA) decided not long ago to get into the innovation business, launching Health 2047, a new for-profit Silicon Valley-style venture innovation incubator.
One of the AMA’s first new ventures is Akiri, a blockchain-enabled data transmitting and sharing network built to efficiently transmit the data the AMA owns among patients, physicians, and health systems. According to a news brief filed at the time, Akiri’s data transmission network includes health information exchanges, and will allow the personal health records of patients to be transmitted. [1]
What most people don’t know is that Congress effectively granted the AMA a monopoly on healthcare data back in the sixties.
As a physician, I am proud of the degree I earned. Upon graduation from medical school, my diploma conferred the title of physician and medical doctor, it did not say “provider.” The word “doctor” originates from the Latin “docere”, meaning to teach. I value highly my role as a teacher to patients, students, residents and colleagues. Physicians should accept nothing less than the title we worked hard to obtain through a great deal of personal and professional sacrifice. It was a small price to pay to join that sacred society of men and women who have devoted their lives to healing.
Calling me a “provider” is a professional insult, no different from that of discriminating based on my race, ethnicity, religion, or gender. The source of any argument can often be found by looking at the language used to frame it. Something about the word provider has always bothered me. So I decided to investigate and learn a little about the history of the word. As I researched this story, I made a very interesting discovery, which surprised me. It turns out the term “provider” was first utilized by The Third Reich, who embraced it to devalue Jewish physicians as medical professionals.