Bent Tree Family Physicians

05/10/2024

Long before I was worried about artificial intelligence, I had to deal with mom intelligence.

Chat-mom has changed very little over the years. She won’t hesitate to answer any question, whether she knows the answer or not.

Sometimes she hallucinates and makes my childhood sound like a Disney movie. Other times, she remembers the exact date of a family picnic 50 years ago when I spilt the iced tea.

Mom intelligence will just straight-up tell you “No”, usually before you can even ask.
She already knows your question, and you already knew the answer.
Ultra-fast, real-time, data processing.

“I know what y’all are doing in there!”

Don’t try to trick Chat-mom.
Some believe that she is listening to everything we say. It’s in her code.
She even knows what we are feeling.
Emotive intelligence at the next level.
It’s downright eerie.

Chat-mom is always happy to go mobile too, with pre-programmed responses.
“If y’all don’t stop that, I’m going to pull over. I swear. I’ll turn around!”

Mom intelligence has saved my life on more than one occasion.
I find myself hearing her instructions even when she’s not around.
It’s like she’s in my head.
Helping.

Artificial intelligence may change our world. But let’s never forget:
Chat-mom created our world.

06/28/2023

Dr. Latta has been an important part of Bent Tree Family Physicians since she was 15 years old!
Watching her journey from a 15 year old patient to become one of the most respected family physicians in Texas has been our honor and privilege.
Bent Tree Family Physicians is proud to celebrate with Dr. Latta!

04/14/2023

We are proud to announce the birth of Dr. Amy Latta’s beautiful granddaughter! ❤️❤️❤️

Frances Amy Latta
4:11 pm
4/13/23
8 pounds
20.5 ounces

Born to Jonathan and Nathalie Latta

04/07/2023

Ready for some good healthcare news?
I still love Family Medicine.
The brilliant man in this photo is my college math professor, Dr. Boldt.
He has been my patient for 36 years.

He taught me Calculus in 1976.
I must have been a good student because he chose me as his personal physician as soon as I opened my office.

Primary care is a journey, not a destination. It’s about taking a path of life together, through ups and downs, preventing some things and persevering through the others.

Over a dozen of my college professors have honored me by becoming my patients. There’s something special about giving back to those who made my career possible.

How many people get the chance to say “Thanks” with acts of service?
Family physicians do that every day.

Family Medicine hasn’t been all of the things that I’d hoped for, but in many ways, this career has exceeded my wildest dreams.

Each joy in my career has had a person attached to it. Amazing people that have been appreciative, supportive, and forgiving.

Many patients are the children and grandchildren of my earliest. My most tolerant patients, thankfully, have stuck around to approach our 4th decade together. We’ve learned a lot about each other during the decades.

The best journeys are usually the unpredictable ones. That’s one good thing I can say about Family Medicine. My days are marvelously unpredictable.

By the way, the truth is that I wasn’t a very good math student, but Dr. Boldt saw something in me that he liked. I owe him for that and hope to have a few more decades to say “Thanks”.

04/02/2023

Next pandemic- and we all know there will be one - let’s do things different.
Next pandemic - let’s be honest.
Surely it can’t be that hard.
Let’s start with “I don’t know”.

Practice saying these with me…
Especially you government officials lurking in the back.
“We are not sure yet, but we are open to every idea.”
Come on, you can say it, now mean it.

Let’s agree that we are all trying to figure things out.
That’s what good physicians do.
Physicians don’t so much know things…
Our job is mostly to figure things out.
That’s why we gather information, order tests, and get consults.
The core job in a crisis is to figure out what’s figureoutable.

Symptoms change. Treatments change.
Next pandemic - let’s agree that it’s ok to change our minds.
Don’t get hung up on the “truth”.
“Truth” changes.
Life teaches all of us that.
Ask any teenager. Ask any old man.

And this next part is very important -
Let’s let physicians practice the medicine.

The next time the government says “your personal physician can’t give you a vaccine, but a stranger with an Igloo cooler in a parking lot can…”
let’s push the pause button and go ask our personal physicians.

The next time a mysterious illness shows up across the street from a place that happens to be studying that illness…
let’s ask questions.

The next time the government says “Don’t ask questions” - that should scare the hell out of us.

Next pandemic - let’s ask lots of questions.
That’s the strength of medicine.
It’s the foundation of science and life.
Question everything.
No topic is out of bounds.
Each answer may lead to more questions. That is ok.

Next pandemic - let’s be smarter.

07/08/2022

35 year Anniversary

I am proud to announce that, after 35 years, I am… not changing jobs.
Frankly, it’s taken me decades to get good at this one.

This month I celebrate 35 years of being an independent family physician.

I began medical school in 1980, which means that I’ve had 42 years to figure out how little I know. Family Medicine is very humbling. Just when I think I have answers, the questions change.
Let me give you some idea of what has changed since I began medical school:

There were no MRI’s.
CT’s were rare. We made a diagnosis based upon history and physical. Looking and listening was the most important part of the training.

There was no HIV.
The only med students without bloody shoes went into psychiatry. It was rite of passage to see scrubs change color.

No HIPAA.
We didn’t need no stinking law to tell us that patient privacy is sacred. You know what you call a physician that can’t keep secrets? You don’t.

No smallpox.
We eradicated this disease in 1980. Yes, it was eradicated with a vaccine.

No Electronic Medical Records.
Charts were handwritten. They were hard to read, but at least we knew where to look for the treatment plans.

No Telehealth.
We made phone calls to patients to check on how they were doing. No charge.

No Affordable Care Act.
If a physician wanted to charge the same high prices as a hospital, the physician had to be employed by the hospital.

No ACO.
It was a lot harder to hide how much a physician was paid before we got bonuses for over-documenting.

No Stark Law.
We could save you money by owning the facility and charging less. Government had to put an end that foolishness.

No coronary stents.
If you wanted better blood flow, you had to get your chest opened.

No laparoscopic appendectomy.
Closing long incisions after abdominal surgery was how students learned to suture.

No in vitro fertilization.
There are now medical students in the laboratory who actually started in a laboratory.

My career as a family physician remains fascinating and rewarding. No day is ever the same and my education never ends.

Would I change a few things? Sure.
But not my patients.
I would, however, like another 35 years to tell them “Thanks, I’ll try to get it right this time.”

Guy L. Culpepper, M.D.

07/05/2022

03/14/2022

Lucky for all of us, our “pot of gold” is our staff! ☘️❤️

02/13/2022

Here’s a friend that knows what it takes to win a Super Bowl!

Overcome adversity. Overcome injuries.
Overcome bad decisions and bad luck.
Overcome bad press and haters.

Know yourself, believe in yourself, and keep working! Keep pushing! Don’t stop!
There is only way to win.
Earn it!

Bent Tree Family Physicians: Nationally Recognized, Award Winning Physicians, Dedicated to Improving Healthcare.

02/13/2022

Patients know things.
Rule #1 of healthcare: Talk to your patient.
Most of the time a patient will tell you
what’s wrong.

When the vaccine became available, many patients told me that they were waiting to get it from me, their family physician.

People did not want to go to a parking lot to get a government driven, Big Pharma promoted, investor enriching shot from a stranger in a mask.

Patients were having trust issues.
They had questions that deserved respect and attention.
The initial process of vaccine distribution intensified our nation’s trust issues.
Don’t sugar coat it. Getting a shot in such a manner is a fear-driven event.

All that mythical talk about “physicians don’t have refrigerators” and “this is the only way to distribute it efficiently” was BS and people know it.
The same people whose families have been getting vaccines from their primary care physicians their entire lives.
All of a sudden, that’s not good enough?

How did vaccines get to the parking lots?
In cooler chests. On the first day we knew that a week in a normal refrigerator was fine. Very soon, we knew a month was fine. And everyone knows that FedEx and UPS deliver to doctor offices.

Patients know things.
Family physicians and nurses ask our patients “what’s wrong?”
Our government would do well to listen to patients too.

Who knew this would be true that having people get immunizations from a Their Family Doctor as a trusted source would increase vaccination rates ... 18 comments on LinkedIn

01/27/2022

“We have a medical emergency!” shouts the stewardess. “Is there an attorney or a mathematician on board?”

Confused? So was the Biden administration when they formed a new task force to protect us from Covid-19 variants and guard against future infectious diseases.

Called the “Pandemic Innovation Task Force”. It was formed this week by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Fancy name. Worthy cause. Big problem.

They forgot to include any frontline primary care physicians.

You know… those family physicians with the most experience in actually fighting the pandemic? The ones who sacrificed their lives innovating ways to help people, while the academics and policy makers were hunkered down in basements.

America called them “essential”, but the White House, “not so much.”

What do you call a “Pandemic Innovation Task Force” that doesn’t include primary care physicians?
A “Pandemic Farce”.

Their appointed task force leader, Eric Lander, is a gifted mathematician, but you wouldn’t call him if you had a cold, much less a life threatening illness.

But don’t you worry.
If any future disease gets too complicated for algebra, the other task force leader, Dawn O’Connell, is an attorney.

“We will sue this disease all to hell.”