Moonlighting

Moonlighting

Moonlighting is working on the side, sort of part time, while doing your regular full time job. It was strictly against hospital regulations. Most of the moonlighting jobs were connected to the specialty you were in OB’s with OB resident, Surgeons with Surgery resident and Medicine with Medicine resident, etc. All of these specialist did general practice since they would never survive if they expected referrals. The offices of the physicians were over in East St. Louis and several small towns along the river Brooklyn, Lovejoy and Madison whose main source of income was the state funded welfare program.
My first opportunity to work was for a young bachelor named Leon who drove a corvette and was known for his free spending partying ways. He had finished the “G’s” and was currently staffing our cases. He was taking his lady to Mexico and asked me to work his office for the 2 weeks he was gone. My eyes lit up at the opportunity to make some serious money.
I was to work from 7 PM until we saw the last patient which could be midnight and all the cash money I collected was to be mine. I couldn’t wait to get over there; I was literally salivating. The first night I worked was a Friday and I must have seen 100 patients. I couldn’t wait for the book keeper to tally my money so I could head out to one of the clubs and spend some. She handed me an envelope and when I ripped it open there was only 30 dollars in it, I was expecting 300 dollars since he charged 3 dollars/patient. I said “where is the rest of my money”. She said “ that’s all the cash we collected, the rest is welfare billing”. I said “ you better get doc in Mexico right now because we have a problem and I won’t be back”. So she called Leon and we negotiated some realistic terms for a daily sum I could live with.
The other thing that was interesting was that there were two Black pharmacies with direct lines to most all the offices and not knowing at first I would call in a script like this. (There would be 5 kids with strep and I would order a big bottle of antibiotic and divide the dose, the same with a cough syrup or antihistamine. The pharmacist quickly scolded me not to do that but to order a separate scrip for each child of each medication, so 5 became 15 prescriptions and he could charge for each. I know now looking back this was probably the beginning of medical welfare fraud since they were not being compensated fairly up front.
Many a night I pulled up to the office and there would be people sitting on the curb because the waiting room was packed. And I would see every thing from colds to heart failure, pregnancy to thyroid disease on and on until we locked the door.
It is a shame that a Board Certified physician had to do general practice to make a living in this way and a bunch more were doing the same thing.
Dr Sinkler knew what we were doing and ignored it since most of the physicians were either his classmates or he had supervised their training. Dr Monat “ The Great White Father” had no clue we were not in the house but making money on the East side even when on call. But what was one to do with a salary of $70-120 a month with some of us married with kids.
All the jobs weren’t over the river. Some guys made house calls in the city and worked offices too, but it was tricky since an attending might call an office you were working in for something and you could get busted. The one of the best moonlight job I had was when I was a chief . One of the wealthiest Black surgeons, Dr. H, had to go on a medical leave from his practice for several months. His private scrub nurse also gave anesthesia on the side and kind of adopted me as one of her favorite residents.
She asked could I cover for him and could I bring a friend to cover when I couldn’t. My main man ”Cup” was a surgical chief so this was perfect, since it enabled us to alternate coverage. And we were discrete
Dr H had owned a large block of land that the city wanted to redevelop and in the deal they built him a brand new office building right in the middle of the area. Because he had a large farm in the country his office was outfitted with an apartment for the weekdays he spent in the city, it even had a library with a fireplace.
Dr H was the first black surgeon to be Certified by the American Board of Surgery in the United States and was for all intensive purposes filthy rich!
The opportunity we had to work in his office revealed how he achieved this.
His nurse Ms G was also his office manager and confidante and when she asked me to work in his office, I’m certain that she knew I was trustworthy and would treat his patients the same as he.
I arrived promptly at 9 am as I was told and given a crisp white coat and told to relax in the library and they would call me when their first patient was there. Ms G came in to review the chart with me and tell me what I needed to check. The patient was an old Black man dressed in bib overalls, the owner of a coal company who had long standing hypertension and heart failure.
She said she would introduce me and for me to check his BP and listen to his heart as doctor always did. It was always doctor does this or doctor does that.
When I asked him to take off his shirt she whispered don’t bother doctor never does that. I wondered how doctor could hear the heart sounds through his shirt, but I did as directed. After I did my cursory physical, she said that was all I needed to do and they would get some tests. These consisted of a blood count, urinalysis and a chest X-ray. When these were done she informed him they would see him in 4 weeks and he pulled out a big roll of bills and peeled off 5 one hundred dollar bills to pay. My eyes were as big as saucers. Twenty minutes at most and he paid $500, I was seeing why Dr H was rich.
They told me that I had another patient in about an hour so relax, they had made me some hot tea in the library. I saw 2 more patients with nothing really wrong with them and was told to get ready for lunch. It was now about 11am and they served a sit down dinner of baked chops, greens, yams, salad, ice tea and pie. I was in heaven.
They then sent me to my recliner in the library to read or nap until the afternoon patients showed. I saw probably 4 more and was done by 3pm. Ms G gave me 3 one hundred dollar bills and said I had done a superb job.
I was literally flying with joy getting that money for doing nothing. When I got back to the hospital I found “Cup” and said “ Big Boy we have hit the mother lode, you won’t believe what we hummed in on”. In 2 months we made more money than what we would have made at the “G’s” during a year of residency.
Dr H had two children, one in law and one in medicine, and the one in medicine wanted to be a psychiatrist so he had no one to take over his practice. Because Ms G liked us so much she asked if when we finished would we work for doctor. We in good faith didn’t want to have a practice like this after completing the training we had received. It would have been like selling out our values for the money! Sometime I wonder by taking the “ high ground” did we do the right thing since we both never got rich! But I’ll say one thing Dr H knew how to live.