Excerpt from Never a Dull Moment The Life of an Activist Physician: An Anecdotal Autobiography, by George C. Denniston MD (independently published, June, 2025). Reprinted with permission from the author.
I am not clear why more doctors do not choose to practice in a non-profit setting. There are many advantages, and few drawbacks. Many hospitals are not-for-profit, so having a practice that is non-profit is not such a radical departure. The essential point is that Americans have set up the non-profit structure to do all the creative things a society needs, with minimal governmental interference. One can keep all the money one makes; a Board determines the staff salaries and determines that the projects performed with the remaining assets fit the purposes of the corporation.
Those purposes can be made sufficiently broad to cover a large assortment of fascinating projects.
Population Dynamics, a 501-C-3 tax-exempt corporation, produced a number of medical training films over the years. We trained third year residents from the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Washington. This Department, of which I have been a member since its inception, has been ranked #1 in the United States for the past twenty years. We made loans to other clinics to help them get started. We developed flyers, brochures, and slide shows, so the public would know about new technologies available to them.
Perhaps most important of all, we kept the cost of care down, thus forcing it down among our competitors in Seattle. As a direct result of low prices and expert providers, we had the lowest rate of second trimester abortion in the nation. Since second tri’s (3 months to 6 months) are riskier, we also had the best record for safety. We achieved this simply by creating better access to the services and offering caring treatment.
Conflict between profits and patient care. Privatisation of public hospitals not likely for a while #auspol
bc this sort of thing happenshttps://t.co/NEme0mtUxc pic.twitter.com/egmlcG72FA
— Michael West (@MichaelWestBiz) May 14, 2025
A non-profit must have a Board of Directors. That may mean that you cannot do everything you want with the income you generate, but a supportive Board can have much positive influence and greatly enhance the reputation of the organization. A Board helps keep a public organization public; they also protect and strengthen it.
A non-profit can obtain grants and use the money for the purposes given. We received grants of over one-quarter million dollars. Population Dynamics also was a granting agency, providing grants to deserving individuals for appropriate projects.
Practicing medicine under a non-profit umbrella permits a physician to practice medicine the way he believes it should be practiced and permits him to gain mastery over a number of procedures or diseases. The non-profit structure makes for lower costs of care, and
greater access to care in the community.
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