Hi all! A few people have asked about helping me in my fight against Lincoln Financial Group. Today’s post is in response to that question. One thing you can do to help me this week is send an email to the Dean at the Perelman School of Medicine where Dr. Lee Hartner is listed as a member of the faculty.
(The dean’s publicly listed email is evpdean@upenn.edu. Additional emails can be found here, if you’d like to CC: anyone else at the Dean’s office.)
We all know appealing to any sense of morality on the part of Lincoln Financial Group is a lost cause. However, we can and should still expect doctors, especially those charged with the education and mentoring of the next generation of medical professionals, to maintain public confidence in the profession.
Feel free to copy and paste the letter below directly into an email, or just use it as a springboard for writing your own. If you hear back from anyone, please tell me about it! Use my contact page or email me directly at speakupforemily@gmail.com.
As always, thanks for your support. I promise to let you all know as soon as I have any news to share. IF I have any news to share.
Dr. Jameson,
I have read the open letter at https://emilysuess.com/2019/06/15/open-letter-j-larry-jameson/ and would like to know your position on Penn Medicine faculty taking money—money that should be going to pay disabled consumers’ long-term disability claims—in exchange for biased medical reviews that contradict treating physicians’ professional medical opinions.
Doctors who accept payments for these underhanded disability reviews not only directly harm patients by stripping them of financial security, they are an insult to treating physicians who work to provide the best possible medical care for their patients. In Emily’s case specifically, Dr. Lee Hartner’s report is a cruel dismissal of the professional rapport Emily’s primary physician established with her patient. What Dr. Hartner did in declining to even speak with Emily’s primary physician goes beyond professional discourtesy, it’s an insult.
When you fail to call out this behavior, you protect a minority of greedy doctors at the expense of the reputation of the entire medical profession. The very least you could do is explain to Emily and the general public why you don’t seem to have a problem with that.
Updated 7/10/2019 7:31 CDT to correct a typo I just couldn’t stare at any longer.
