Patch Adams, M.D., doctor, professional clown, author and lecturer said he was the founder of the "world's first silly hospital" at a speech in Rockefeller Center last night.
Dressed in a colorful shirt, suspenders and a bright tie, his long gray hair in a braid, Adams captivated the audience of about 70 people as he alternated between lectures on intimacy in medicine and joy in life, reciting poetry and performing clown acts which involved his listeners.
Turning his lecture into a show, he took off his slacks and donned oversized purple clown pants with which he demonstrated his methods of attracting attention to himself. This earned him laughter and applause from his listeners.
He said, for him, medical school was easy, leaving him with free time to study health care delivery, which he found very unsatisfactory.
After one year of residency, he said, his love of "whole-systems thinking" led him to conceive a model which addresses all the problems in health care.
He and his wife turned their home into a hospital open 24 hours a day. Adams, who said he feels more like a clown than a doctor said he never charged any money for the services he and his team provided for the five to 50 people staying at his home every night.
During the first five years of the project, he and his wife never went to bed without patients in their room, since they never turned people away.
Whereas a conventional hospital focuses solely on the physical aspect of medicine, he said, he wanted to build intimate relationships with his patients.
He explained that many patients have a negative attitude toward life, and even when doctors cure their illnesses, they still see their lives as tough. For Adams, health lies not in the absence of disease, but in a "happy, vibrant, exuberant life," he said.
His project was not funded until recently, and he said his team had to work outside jobs and had to struggle to earn enough money to uphold the free medical service the hospital-at-home offered.
"The practice of medicine is such a beautiful experience that it's worth paying to do," he said. "It's really fun to do it."
Adams, who referred to himself as "a political activist," "radical," "goofy" and "way out there," works together with practitioners of alternative medicine, and critiques the lack of diversity of ideas in conventional medicine.
"If you like people, if you like human interaction, medicine is enchanting," he said. "The ideal patient is an intimate friend for life. Maybe intimacy is what life is all about."
He said dehumanization is the problem with health care, saying that his hospital never had anything to do with insurance, not even malpractice insurance.
Insurance companies breed fear and mistrust, which are deadly in medicine, he said. "We're not interested in waivers. We practice the politics of vulnerability."
He called the loss of house-calls a tragedy, saying that his initial interviews with patients take three to four hours. When making house calls, he said, he is incredibly curious, eager to find out everything about the patient. He said he opens drawers, goes into the patient's attic and asks to read journals.
"They always let me", he said.
Adams, who subscribes to 120 magazines, said he regularly corresponds with 1,000 people and answers all his mail within a week.
"I love people", he said several times during his speech. "And medicine is simply friend after friend after friend."
When financial concerns became increasingly pressing, Adams said he was forced to "go public". He wanted to close the home hospital to wait for a real one.
As he became more famous, he was hired to lecture at medical conventions. Finding them boring, he began to speak not only on health care but to recite poetry and perform clown acts to attract attention, aiming at raising adequate funding for the real hospital.
His story is now being made into a film, and one of his favorite actors, Robin Williams, is set to play his character. He said it was ironic that William's salary by far exceeds the amount necessary to build the new hospital Adams desires.
On his tours around the world, Adams said he has now found sponsors for the hospital he plans to build on an idyllic plot of land in West Virginia. An Australian woman who decided to become his patrons covers his monthly practice expenses, and with other donations arriving from around the globe, Adams said he is now out of financially troubled waters.
