Richie Rich

The specialty medical practice that I left in NC was staffed by three very fun and gifted physicians. These guys were most likely on the nerd squad while in high school complete with pocket protectors and calculators hanging from their belt loops. However, they blossomed into handsome, accomplished men. We are talking brilliance on a stick. These guys were triple Board Certified and that is no easy task. Besides all the intelligence we had humor. Can you imagine? Intelligence and wit all wrapped up in not one but three specialists. It’s rare, trust me.

This post is dedicated to Richie Rich. He looked exactly like that character. The first day at our practice, I asked if I could refer to him as Richie Rich and after I explained who he was, the doctor agreed. Did I mention that Richie Rich was all of 29 years old when he joined our practice? Doogie Howser’s cousin, easily. ( Yes, I had to explain to him who he was also)

These physicians had a super charming exterior which made the female drug dealers, a.k.a. pharmaceutical reps, flock to our practice. We came up with a system within the office to curtail the drug dealing visit. We’d give the physicians enough time to hear about all the bells and whistles of the new product for 15 minutes. If the drug dealer wasn’t wrapping it all up, we would page the physician’s beeper to move things along. At that point he would dismiss the drug dealer and move on with patient care.

Richie Rich seemed to have a bunch of groupies. It was comical. He also had a very controlling wife. She specifically dropped by my office one day to tell me to keep Richie focused and away from any drug dealers. This was a diminutive Asian/American woman but she intimidated the hell out of me, a lawyer by trade. I told her I would do my best.

Richie specifically enjoyed the attention and would have a difficult time sending the drug dealers away. It got to the point where he would ignore the page all together. He would set the parameters of the visit no matter how hard we tried to keep him on schedule. To his credit, he did make up the time by the end of each day and no patient was slighted in the least. Part of my job was to keep the whole process moving along with happy physicians and patients. If Richie wants to enjoy the attention, who am I to stop him. It was not my job to keep his wife happy.

Unfortunately, Richie got busted. On this particular day during a drug dealer visit by a particularly attractive rep, Mrs. Rich decided to make a surprise visit. I saw her pull into the parking lot and I immediately began paging Richie repeatedly. Once again, he ignored the pages. I even stuck my head into the nurses station where the encounters took place and he waved me off. I did what I could. The second Mrs. Rich entered the nurse’s station, Richie’s ears became beet red. He looked like a thermometer ready to explode. Mrs. Rich placed herself between Richie and the drug dealer and told her husband it was time for lunch. And she leads him away. Forget that we had four more patients waiting to be seen in the waiting room. I was not going to interrupt the impending domestic discourse between Dr. and Mrs. Richie Rich.

I did what any good administrator would do. I paged the other two physicians, found out which one could come to the office to see the remaining patients and our morning was complete. Of course between the rest of the staff and me, we made sure that the rescuing physician knew all the details so that Richie could be mercilessly berated.

Richie never ignored another page while in my tutelage.