{"id":1290,"date":"2012-09-25T07:45:19","date_gmt":"2012-09-25T13:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/?p=1290"},"modified":"2012-12-17T08:13:13","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T14:13:13","slug":"mcwhorter-promotes-documentary-critical-of-profit-driven-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/2012\/09\/25\/mcwhorter-promotes-documentary-critical-of-profit-driven-health-care\/","title":{"rendered":"McWhorter Promotes Documentary Critical of Profit-Driven Health Care"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Clayton McWhorter was recently featured in a story by WPLN, Nashville’s public radio station.\u00a0 Belmont’s McWhorter Hall was named in honor of the Nashville businessman and his brother. \u00a0 Link here to the full story<\/a> which also features an audio interview.
\n<\/p>\n

WPLN News
\nMonday, September 24th, 2012, by Blake Farmer<\/p>\n

One of the most prominent names in the Nashville health care business is helping promote a documentary condemning the industry that made him a fortune. Entrepreneur and former HCA executive Clayton McWhorter wants people to watch Escape Fire.<\/p>\n

The documentary made a splash at the Sundance film festival and will be in select theaters \u2013 including Nashville\u2019s Belcourt \u2013 October 5th.<\/p>\n

In the film, health care insiders accuse the system of focusing on ways to get paid instead of ways to get people well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen medicine became a business, we lost our moral compass,\u201d says Dr. Steven Nissen, head of cardiology at the non-profit Cleveland Clinic. \u201cI think we\u2019ve gotten into a great deal of trouble because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clayton McWhorter has taken a personal interest in the film. His health reform advocacy organization called SHOUTAmerica has sponsored screenings on college campuses and at the country\u2019s top medical schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sort of believe we have a system that we don\u2019t want you to get well nor die, because either way we lose a customer,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

McWhorter places some of the blame on doctors, who are the ones writing prescriptions and ordering tests. Though he admits that while a hospital chain executive he encouraged what he calls \u201cutilization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pointing fingers at myself almost,\u201d McWhorter says. \u201cGood people have made a lot of money off of a flawed health care system. It\u2019s fee for service. If you\u2019re selling trinkets, you\u2019ve got to sell a lot of them. I hate to say this, but we\u2019re selling medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 50-year career made McWhorter one of the wealthiest people in Tennessee. He says he\u2019s long believed the health care business needs incentives to shift to prevention. While he was running companies, though, McWhorter says he was merely operating within the existing system.<\/p>\n

McWhorter is chairman of venture capital firm Clayton Associates, which he founded in the mid-90s. The list of companies he\u2019s led or founded includes PharmMD, LifeTrust, HealthTrust and HCA. McWhorter has also been involved in politics, primarily on the fundraising side. He considered running for Tennessee governor as a Democrat in 1994.<\/p>\n

In an interview with WPLN<\/a>, McWhorter says for-profit health care has to focus more on prevention, even if it means lower profits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clayton McWhorter was recently featured in a story by WPLN, Nashville’s public radio station.\u00a0 Belmont’s McWhorter Hall was named in honor of the Nashville businessman and his brother. \u00a0 Link here to the full story which also features an audio … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pharmacy","category-chs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1290"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}