Mississippi Wants Eisenhower-Era Doctor to Quit

I like this story because it's about a guy who is committed to his original principles as a physician. Dr. Carroll Frazier Landrum, 88, attends professionally and intelligently to people who need his services.  Most of his clients are people he's been treating for years if not decades, many on medicare who prefer him as their doctor.  

The state of Mississippi is claiming that Dr. Landrum is incompetent because he works out of his car.  Landrum points out the meaning of that charge:  

At a recent hearing, Landrum said, he was labeled “incompetent” by the board. He said the charge is a catchall, one designed to avoid citing a specific occupational violation, and he maintains he’s done nothing wrong. He said he doesn’t recruit patients and only responds to those who have nowhere else to turn.

Correct.  It is a catchall.  But hopefully the charge will be difficult to stick given the love and support coming forward by all of his patients in his defense.  Here is one example:

Responding to the WLBT story, Margie Williams Divinity, a former registered nurse who said she has worked alongside Landrum in the past, wrote:

I beg the state board of medicine to allow Dr Landrum to continue practicing medicine. He is one of the smartest physicians still practicing. His knowledge base is vast. His diagnosis are always on point and he refers patients and always follow up with his patients. He cares about people, about treating them. He doesn’t care about all of the billing insurances and Medicare and all of the politics associated with medicine. He just wants to help people. He is still very sharp mentally at 88 probably because he did not let all of this political monopoly on healthcare stress him out by not continuing to partake. He is 88 y/o. Let him do what he enjoys and at the same time continue to serve his community…

And you have to love his background:
He grew up on a rural farm picking cotton during the Great Depression. After high school, he said, he was drafted into the Navy, where he worked as a sonar operator on a destroyer in the South Pacific. A stint in the Air Force during the Korean War followed, and then medical school at Tulane University came next. By the mid-1950s, he’d launched a private practice that has lasted for decades.

“After all these years, I still want to be like the small-town doctor who cared for us growing up — Dr. Coursey,” Landrum said. “He was good and always happy. There was never a time when he treated anyone like they were not someone.”