Anonymous Doctor

#notarealmemo

To: Residents
Re: Financial Crisis

Due to the recent turmoil in the financial markets, we would like to ask you to follow a few simple guidelines to ensure that we retain the flexibility to continue to pay your salaries:

1. If a patient needs one test, you may as well give him two. We're not saying you should wheel patients to CT unnecessarily, but if they're there anyway, you may as well stop on the way back for an MRI. Never hurts (us) to have more images.

2. We will be changing the standard blood protocol to once every twenty minutes. If you can't find a vein, keep trying.

3. "Oops, how did that sharp object get on the bed?" We will be distributing objects to place in the path of your patients. Should one of these objects accidentally become lodged inside a patient, of course we will have no choice but to perform a surgical procedure to remove it.

4. Automatic nightly discharges. Let's get everyone out of their beds and back in the ER each night, so we can readmit them by the morning. Shorter stays, but full beds. That's the game.

5. "Is he really dead?" Let's be completely sure. Don't be afraid to perform procedures when the patient is still in that transitional phase between life and death. We never really know what can happen, right?

6. Is someone still here because he has nowhere to go? Effective immediately, the parking lot in the back is going to serve as intermediate storage for patients awaiting placement. We already know they don't need a bed. Now, they don't need a roof either. Let's keep it moving.

7. There are worse things than a new-onset infection from contaminated medical supplies. Just keep that in the back of your mind.

8. We will be raising the television rate to $50/day. Inform your patients all television will be turned off unless they prepay by 5PM. Cash only. And, at this point, preferably foreign currency.

See you at tomorrow's morning meeting. Invisible doughnuts will be served.