Not having seen the film, I can't comment on it, or on the performance by the late lamented Robin Williams.

I had the radio on and, within the last several months, I heard a soundbite with Dr. Adams; he was visiting a local community organization, I've already forgotten which one; something more grassroots than fundraiser-glitz, by the sound of it.

His website still exists (for his Gesundheit organization), and it seems that construction is several years underway in West Virginia. Rather than start with the proposed hospital, the construction started with the "Teaching Center."

I have asked physicians about Patch Adams. These doctors are published authors, and what they generally write about, and practice, is medicine with a holistic and patient-oriented viewpoint. Both happen to be women. They know Dr. Adams of old, because he is unafraid to challenge the medical establishment, and because they have been part of a movement to focus less on the business and more on the patient.

Both physicians stop in their tracks at the mention of his name, I have to say, and after a pause, they will carefully say that they support his message. But there is much shaking of the head and sighing. They have seen people warm to him, and they have seen patients who were genuinely frightened of him. Not that he intended harm, but that he overwhelmed people with his own forcefulness.

Where these professionals draw a line, is with the choices made with the funds raised, and the way he has treated other people over the years. His actions trouble them, especially over time, and they wish that his ideas had been followed through with greater consideration of other people. They support his ideas but not his behavior.

Dr. Adams seems to have put an important message across, and to have done so over a long period of time; for that alone hopefully he will be remembered.