The Medical Arts Building — What Is Lost and What We Still Have
When I arrived in Ashland, Wisconsin for my first job out of training, a building stopped me. It had the name “Medical Arts” on it, proud for the whole town to see. My teachers had always called medicine an art and a science. They never mentioned the third word that medicine always was as well: business. And it's the business of medicine that has quietly erased those Medical Arts buildings across the north woods. The one in Ashland is apartments now. This post uses my own first practice, sold to a large health system before I arrived, to trace what physicians give up in that trade and the voice they don't have to. The lesson for any leader with more influence than authority: when you carry a strong argument and a sore spot, keep them in separate sentences.