Southern Hospitality

“I thank the Lord every day that I lost my insurance,” Mrs. Coleman said with a raspy voice. “Without y'all, I know this all would have been different. I wouldn't change a thing.” She stared at me without blinking, an almost hypnotizing gaze that held me captive. I wanted to look away but couldn't. Instead, I sat in respectful silence.

Mrs. Coleman was more than just a patient to me. She was the mother of one of my close friends from college. Our relationship wasn't built on prescription instructions or follow-up appointments. It was born on the many weekend road trips we made to Atlanta to escape our tiny college town of Tuskegee, Alabama. Mrs. Coleman's living-room floor became our favorite hotel and her refrigerator the best restaurant in town. The Southern hospitality she always showed me and everyone else who fit into the carload created a warm familiarity that never went away. Years later, when I was all grown up, out of college and medical school, and gainfully employed, I took a job at the downtown public hospital in Atlanta. Although I didn't need to crash on her couch anymore, I never forgot how nice she was to me.

Carla, her daughter and my friend, called me one afternoon to ask for my help getting Mrs. Coleman into our medical clinic. With frustration in her voice, she explained that her mother had stopped paying the expensive health insurance premium upon her recent retirement and was without insurance. An acute encounter in a local emergency department for a hand condition ended with a diagnosis of the carpal tunnel syndrome and high blood pressure. What it did not end with, however, was a follow-up appointment with any of their hospital physicians. She was instructed to go where the uninsured were welcomed: …