In a world obsessed with efficiency, even our doctors’ offices reveal what we’re becoming. From AI note-taking to cold, utilitarian spaces, modern care risks losing the warmth that once made medicine human.
Just 25 years ago (it seems like a lifetime), my doctors had comfortable rooms with windows, did not sit staring at a computer the maximum time I was there, sat in a chair in front of you and looking at you, asking questions, waiting for my reply, and then coming to some sort of conclusion with recommendations and then waiting for my approval or more questions.
Although none of my doctors use AI to take "care" of me (yet), all sit across the room attached to a computer asking questions the CDC instructs them to ask and then comes over to me to examine me if their 10-15 minute maximum would not get them in trouble with the corporation that owns the practice.
My rheumatologist requires a questionnaire to be filled out prior to seeing her but she never, ever goes over it. We sit in a small windowless room. She spends less than ten minutes away from the computer, rarely touches me, and doesn't seem interested in me at all.
I'm old enough to have had the luxury of having my doctor come to my home and lucky to have two doctors in my neighborhood who would come if my doctor could not.
I have a vague memory, from when I was really young and a doctor had come to our house after dark. Apparently I had had an allergic reaction of some kind and he was trying to guess at what the allergen might have been. It was a different time.
Oh Sarah. How sterile everything has become in our technological world. Even so, everything that was supposed to make life easier has become harder in many ways and so devoid of human contact. They say you can never go back. And yet, many are finding new ways to communicate and connect with others and reintroduce old customs and traditions so not all is bleak.
Sarah, you are wise beyond your years. My wife, the Nurse Practitioner with decades of experience, has never hated nursing more. To clarify, she loves caring for people and helping them get and stay well. She's blessed to work in a private practice that actually tries to avoid the cattle call revolving door of patients and she cares about every one she sees. What she DESPISES is the bureaucracy, the "notes," the paperwork and - most of all - the bean counting paper pushers in the insurance agencies who actually control health care today. It might seem silly to long for the days of Doc Baker hustling to the Ingalls' home because Laura has a fever, and being paid with a chicken, but compared to what it's like now to visit a doctor, it might not be such a bad thing.
I left my doctor of 25 years in 2021 when I finally figured out he cared more about catering to gay ideology than patient care. My new doctor doesn't take insurance. Listens attentively. Has an icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in the waiting room.
You have described every doctor's office, and every doctor's visit in America.
Who's time is more valuable, the patient's or the doctor's? Silly question, an MD is an MD and therefore is much more valuable.
The need to repeat your symptoms over and over and over, and every time you say something is "mis-entered" in the ever-present computer. You say my "left should hurts", first assistant or nurse enters, "patient hasn't slept well last few nights".
And then you have foreign doctors that can barely speak English attempting to listen and understand what you are saying, and worse, you can't understand what they said either.
It's a joke, a very costly joke. Doctors bill thousands upon thousands of dollars to the "insurance fairy", and get paid a reasonable (?) fee, by those fairies. But your co-pay and deductibles continue to creep up.
Obamacare was just dress rehearsal for the government to take on the largest sector of the economy, and make everyone dependent on the government and enriching the insurance companies in the process.
The health system needs to be imploded, and rebuilt. But not one single politician will ever vote for that - they created the massive insurance companies that dutifully feed them back reelection bucks, while doctors are wined and dined by the same companies.
We are stuck in a false dichotomy - socialized medicine or a broken system... pick your pill.
I signed up for a patient portal where I can access the notes the doctor wrote after my visit. I went to the ER for pain in my side and did not indicate I had chest pain but their report said I did.
Another doctor's notes said she told me this or that when she had not.
So, I imagine the future will be all AI from scheduling an appointment to not even seeing a human being but being "cared" for by a robot.
There are doctors out there that are fighting the good fight.
It's always a good idea to review post-visit notes, and call the healthcare providers out when they do what they did in your case (and mine, many times over). I bug them until they get tired of me and correct the record of that visit.
I've spent hours on the phone or sending messages to do this and just get the run around. Oh, I'm told, you must be mistaken. The doctor would never enter into your record anything he/she did not do. My word against theirs. Guess whose word prevails?
Education, justice, and medicine are disciplines of both art and science. We are in a culture that worships science blindly, scolds critical thinking, and distorts and undermines the objective beauty of art and as a result these systems are corrupted and failing.
I feel very lucky to be able to practice medicine in a way that allows me to exercise my humanity and embrace the science AND art of healing.
Aside from the queries once you arrive beginning at the front desk, filling out a form you already filled out online, then the same questions from assistant/tech/or nurse in the exam room, then the doctor. It is a waste of paper, people, and time. Our time. Lest we forget there is a box we must check: male, female, or other. Insanity. Oh and the questions of Safety- of course because big gov. wants to be in everyone’s business.
I feel for those physicians who did not sign up for Business Watchers to be in their business. Not only those nearing retirement are leaving sooner, but younger disillusioned ones have been as well. To spend all that time in school learning and being excited to put to use the many years of study only to then have to answer to accountants, business moguls, insurance companies and secretaries, demanding more and more from them.
It is a sad commentary and demeaning.
Most did not sign up for this.
There are fine doctors and other medical practitioners who are still doing the best they can with time constraints and fire breathing managers with stop watches. With AI and robots taking over various human jobs, and the way hospitals and offices are working, I believe neither will be around as long as most are counting on, like dinosaurs faded in history. Hospital nurses are over it as well and leaving in droves.
When people get fed up enough they can find Functional-Integrative Medical Practitioners. They are around and growing in number, more so since Covid. They are all over the country.
MD’s, DO’s, PA’s,NP’s, RN’s and other health practitioners. Most insurance companies do not pay for this, it is out of pocket.
I grew up in a time where doctors had the time, where the patient was important. Where doctors cared and you felt it. You knew it. Sincere questions of how are you ? Is your family doing well? Then the time was spent uncovering why you were there. Thorough questions. Concerned kind remarks. Script in hand if needed. And a genuine “it was good to see you.” A caring heart and hand. Okay, I’m old!
Most but not all medical professionals are on a clock run by Big Business Conglomerates who are cold, calculating, controlled, and callous; like misers in tall buildings running up the tab and counting the money who do not know anything about the physicians or their patients, while the professionals are doing the hard work stuffed in offices without windows; hurried, harried, and overworked.
My husband and I waited two hours at the end of a day, for an appt I had for over two months, with a doctor whom I had seen a number of times who operated on me. He looked exhausted when he opened the door because he was. He looked at us then asked, “again, what are you here for?” Never apologized for our long wait. He had not taken the time to look briefly at why I was there. He gave me five or six minutes. My file lay on his desk un-opened.
My husband and I have a duo we see who is in the Functional Medicine category.
He only spent 5 minutes with me and I was glad when I switched to my physician's assistant who spent 20 minutes with me. She doesn't do that any more. Maybe I need to switch to my physician's assistant assistant?
You have well explained the danger of AI - the elimination of Jesus's Second Commandment. The greatest problem we have in the world is the loss of God. Once we eliminate God we are left to our own devices - we might as well put a gun to our collective head. Why is loving our neighbor is so important? It is because of our souls, which is the only part of us that is Divine, once we ask God to dwell there. But love is nothing by itself - it has to be given away to exist and grow. The act of recognizing another, even through the smallest gesture amounts to our soul seeking and seeing God in another. Sometimes, when we are fortunate we can even feel the connection. Transcendence is the most practical gift of God where he connects himself to us in a very natural and practical way.
It’s amazing that we have these machines capable of building anything we desire. Yet we build only ugly. It says more about our souls than anyone wants to admit.
The pseudo-doctor described can work away... for a time until the machine replaces him... but I look for a real doctor who cannot be replaced by a machine. This true doctor will be free. Proinsias
This is a much better way of treating people. The father of these two brothers, was taken into America courts many times for curing people with Cancer and eventually had to give up his Medical Licence and move to Mexico to practice.
I came across this man via Edward Griffin's book, World without Cancer.
Doctors in private practice, which were most when I was young & didn't need them, worked for patients. Today nearly all work for a big corporations only concerned with profit. So many hospitals lost million$ during the plandemic restrictions & they've been trying to make it up since. :-(
Just 25 years ago (it seems like a lifetime), my doctors had comfortable rooms with windows, did not sit staring at a computer the maximum time I was there, sat in a chair in front of you and looking at you, asking questions, waiting for my reply, and then coming to some sort of conclusion with recommendations and then waiting for my approval or more questions.
Although none of my doctors use AI to take "care" of me (yet), all sit across the room attached to a computer asking questions the CDC instructs them to ask and then comes over to me to examine me if their 10-15 minute maximum would not get them in trouble with the corporation that owns the practice.
My rheumatologist requires a questionnaire to be filled out prior to seeing her but she never, ever goes over it. We sit in a small windowless room. She spends less than ten minutes away from the computer, rarely touches me, and doesn't seem interested in me at all.
I'm old enough to have had the luxury of having my doctor come to my home and lucky to have two doctors in my neighborhood who would come if my doctor could not.
I have a vague memory, from when I was really young and a doctor had come to our house after dark. Apparently I had had an allergic reaction of some kind and he was trying to guess at what the allergen might have been. It was a different time.
Oh Sarah. How sterile everything has become in our technological world. Even so, everything that was supposed to make life easier has become harder in many ways and so devoid of human contact. They say you can never go back. And yet, many are finding new ways to communicate and connect with others and reintroduce old customs and traditions so not all is bleak.
Yet my hope is in the Lord. He never changes.
Sounds like the time I grew up in. <sigh>
Sarah, you are wise beyond your years. My wife, the Nurse Practitioner with decades of experience, has never hated nursing more. To clarify, she loves caring for people and helping them get and stay well. She's blessed to work in a private practice that actually tries to avoid the cattle call revolving door of patients and she cares about every one she sees. What she DESPISES is the bureaucracy, the "notes," the paperwork and - most of all - the bean counting paper pushers in the insurance agencies who actually control health care today. It might seem silly to long for the days of Doc Baker hustling to the Ingalls' home because Laura has a fever, and being paid with a chicken, but compared to what it's like now to visit a doctor, it might not be such a bad thing.
I left my doctor of 25 years in 2021 when I finally figured out he cared more about catering to gay ideology than patient care. My new doctor doesn't take insurance. Listens attentively. Has an icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in the waiting room.
You have described every doctor's office, and every doctor's visit in America.
Who's time is more valuable, the patient's or the doctor's? Silly question, an MD is an MD and therefore is much more valuable.
The need to repeat your symptoms over and over and over, and every time you say something is "mis-entered" in the ever-present computer. You say my "left should hurts", first assistant or nurse enters, "patient hasn't slept well last few nights".
And then you have foreign doctors that can barely speak English attempting to listen and understand what you are saying, and worse, you can't understand what they said either.
It's a joke, a very costly joke. Doctors bill thousands upon thousands of dollars to the "insurance fairy", and get paid a reasonable (?) fee, by those fairies. But your co-pay and deductibles continue to creep up.
Obamacare was just dress rehearsal for the government to take on the largest sector of the economy, and make everyone dependent on the government and enriching the insurance companies in the process.
The health system needs to be imploded, and rebuilt. But not one single politician will ever vote for that - they created the massive insurance companies that dutifully feed them back reelection bucks, while doctors are wined and dined by the same companies.
We are stuck in a false dichotomy - socialized medicine or a broken system... pick your pill.
I signed up for a patient portal where I can access the notes the doctor wrote after my visit. I went to the ER for pain in my side and did not indicate I had chest pain but their report said I did.
Another doctor's notes said she told me this or that when she had not.
So, I imagine the future will be all AI from scheduling an appointment to not even seeing a human being but being "cared" for by a robot.
There are doctors out there that are fighting the good fight.
It's always a good idea to review post-visit notes, and call the healthcare providers out when they do what they did in your case (and mine, many times over). I bug them until they get tired of me and correct the record of that visit.
I've spent hours on the phone or sending messages to do this and just get the run around. Oh, I'm told, you must be mistaken. The doctor would never enter into your record anything he/she did not do. My word against theirs. Guess whose word prevails?
Education, justice, and medicine are disciplines of both art and science. We are in a culture that worships science blindly, scolds critical thinking, and distorts and undermines the objective beauty of art and as a result these systems are corrupted and failing.
I feel very lucky to be able to practice medicine in a way that allows me to exercise my humanity and embrace the science AND art of healing.
Aside from the queries once you arrive beginning at the front desk, filling out a form you already filled out online, then the same questions from assistant/tech/or nurse in the exam room, then the doctor. It is a waste of paper, people, and time. Our time. Lest we forget there is a box we must check: male, female, or other. Insanity. Oh and the questions of Safety- of course because big gov. wants to be in everyone’s business.
I feel for those physicians who did not sign up for Business Watchers to be in their business. Not only those nearing retirement are leaving sooner, but younger disillusioned ones have been as well. To spend all that time in school learning and being excited to put to use the many years of study only to then have to answer to accountants, business moguls, insurance companies and secretaries, demanding more and more from them.
It is a sad commentary and demeaning.
Most did not sign up for this.
There are fine doctors and other medical practitioners who are still doing the best they can with time constraints and fire breathing managers with stop watches. With AI and robots taking over various human jobs, and the way hospitals and offices are working, I believe neither will be around as long as most are counting on, like dinosaurs faded in history. Hospital nurses are over it as well and leaving in droves.
When people get fed up enough they can find Functional-Integrative Medical Practitioners. They are around and growing in number, more so since Covid. They are all over the country.
MD’s, DO’s, PA’s,NP’s, RN’s and other health practitioners. Most insurance companies do not pay for this, it is out of pocket.
I grew up in a time where doctors had the time, where the patient was important. Where doctors cared and you felt it. You knew it. Sincere questions of how are you ? Is your family doing well? Then the time was spent uncovering why you were there. Thorough questions. Concerned kind remarks. Script in hand if needed. And a genuine “it was good to see you.” A caring heart and hand. Okay, I’m old!
Most but not all medical professionals are on a clock run by Big Business Conglomerates who are cold, calculating, controlled, and callous; like misers in tall buildings running up the tab and counting the money who do not know anything about the physicians or their patients, while the professionals are doing the hard work stuffed in offices without windows; hurried, harried, and overworked.
My husband and I waited two hours at the end of a day, for an appt I had for over two months, with a doctor whom I had seen a number of times who operated on me. He looked exhausted when he opened the door because he was. He looked at us then asked, “again, what are you here for?” Never apologized for our long wait. He had not taken the time to look briefly at why I was there. He gave me five or six minutes. My file lay on his desk un-opened.
My husband and I have a duo we see who is in the Functional Medicine category.
Thank you for sharing. It's truly tragic to see what is happening to an industry that is supposed to prioritize helping people to heal.
He only spent 5 minutes with me and I was glad when I switched to my physician's assistant who spent 20 minutes with me. She doesn't do that any more. Maybe I need to switch to my physician's assistant assistant?
You have well explained the danger of AI - the elimination of Jesus's Second Commandment. The greatest problem we have in the world is the loss of God. Once we eliminate God we are left to our own devices - we might as well put a gun to our collective head. Why is loving our neighbor is so important? It is because of our souls, which is the only part of us that is Divine, once we ask God to dwell there. But love is nothing by itself - it has to be given away to exist and grow. The act of recognizing another, even through the smallest gesture amounts to our soul seeking and seeing God in another. Sometimes, when we are fortunate we can even feel the connection. Transcendence is the most practical gift of God where he connects himself to us in a very natural and practical way.
It’s amazing that we have these machines capable of building anything we desire. Yet we build only ugly. It says more about our souls than anyone wants to admit.
Healthcare? More like disease-care.
The pseudo-doctor described can work away... for a time until the machine replaces him... but I look for a real doctor who cannot be replaced by a machine. This true doctor will be free. Proinsias
This is a much better way of treating people. The father of these two brothers, was taken into America courts many times for curing people with Cancer and eventually had to give up his Medical Licence and move to Mexico to practice.
I came across this man via Edward Griffin's book, World without Cancer.
https://drsambailey.substack.com/p/the-bigelsen-family-explain-terrain?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=1105864&post_id=179218051&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_button&r=l0kc3&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Even if you have the money there may not be one of these doctors near enough to you. There are only a few in my entire small state, they're far from me, & not taking new patients. https://aapsonline.org/aaps-news-november-2025-no-kings-parte-deux/
Doctors in private practice, which were most when I was young & didn't need them, worked for patients. Today nearly all work for a big corporations only concerned with profit. So many hospitals lost million$ during the plandemic restrictions & they've been trying to make it up since. :-(