Listomania - The Life of a Hotel Doctor
By Mike Oppenheim, MD

I once made sixty to eighty visits per year to the Crowne Plaza at the airport. Then they dropped to about five.
When consulted, hotel lawyers always forbid staff from recommending a doctor. Should a guest ask, they insist that an employee silently hand over a list, the longer the better. In this way, when the guest sues the doctor, he or she won't sue the hotel. Lawyers admit that this doesn't work, but they can't help themselves.
Told to make up a list, employees take the easy route by consulting the internet where they find clinics, local practices, and entrepreneurial physicians who charge spectacular fees. They won't find me except on my blog, so it's a crapshoot where on the list I'll end up.
Having produced the list, management forgets about it. Lists always contains doctors and clinics that don't make housecalls. As time passes, some numbers no longer work; for the rest, guests who want to speak to a doctor end up speaking to an answering service or receptionist.
It might take years for calls to return to normal, but I am patient.

Mike Oppenheim
In his regular column "The Life of a Hotel Doctor", Mike Oppenheim shares remarkable stories around visiting hotel guests as a doctor. When he began as a hotel doctor during the 1980s, only luxury hotels had a “house doctor,” usually a local practitioner who did it as a sideline. Nowadays, in a large city even the lowliest motel receives blandishments from a dozen individuals plus several agencies that send moonlighting doctors if they can find one.
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