Hyla Brook Pediatric Specialists, PLLC provides pediatric specialist services to hospitals, clinics, and health systems.

“Hyla Brook”

Robert Frost 1874 – 1963

By June our brook’s run out of song and speed.

Sought for much after that, it will be found

Either to have gone groping underground

(And taken with it all the Hyla breed

That shouted in the mist a month ago,

Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow) –

Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,

Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent

Even against the way its waters went.

Its bed is left a faded paper sheet

Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat –

A brook to none but who remember long.

This as it will be seen is other far

Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.

We love the things we love for what they are.

Mission Statement

Hyla Brook will provide excellent specialty health care to children that is joyful, thorough, friendly, professional, and restorative for our patients, families, and specialists.

Philosophy and Vision

Health care is a fundamental human right.[1] Further, the special needs of children have been internationally recognized as needing dedicated and separate attention.[2] The delivery of health care by physicians in the United States has transformed in the last 20 years from a model of independent practice to one of employed, highly skilled workers.[3] A complex array of factors has influenced this shift, including the corporatization, privatization, and financialization of health care delivery as a consequence of horizontal and vertical integration in the health care industry – the Affordable Care Act, health system consolidation, the purchase of physician practices by hospitals, the expansion of insurance giants to be both buyers and sellers of health care, and the growing presence of private equity in health have all contributed.[4] The loss of financial and operational autonomy is a large contributor to “moral injury” among physicians – a sense of profound distress that the system in which we are enmeshed is preventing patients from receiving needed care and is in fact causing suffering – at odds with our sacred oath to “first do no harm.”[5]

Hyla Brook was founded by Matthew J. Bruehl, M.D. as an attempted antidote to these forces for its founder and for others who share a desire to reclaim joy in patient care. “Hyla Brook” is a poem by Robert Frost that first appeared in Mountain Interval, published in 1916. Frost comments on a shabby-looking brook, noting that the changes that take place as the summer fades have left it barely recognizable: “A brook to none but who remember long.” However, Frost concludes with a beautiful sentiment, that we love the things we love for what they are. So it is with the practice of medicine – while there may be blemishes and twisted motivations permeating health care currently, there remains joy and meaning in caring for others.

One of Dr. Bruehl’s mentors during his training, Wally Brown, M.D. loved to quote Frost to him in clinic and regale residents with the tale of Balto and Togo and their heroic serum run to Nome, Alaska to contain the diphtheria epidemic of 1925. It is in his memory that Hyla Brook Pediatric Specialists was named.

The vision of Hyla Brook is to provide professional pediatric specialist services to those in need, wherever they may live.

______________________________

[1] United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 217A (III), Universal Declaration of Human Rights, A/RES/217(III) (December 10, 1948). Available at https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

[2] Convention on the rights of the child (1989) Treaty no. 27531. United Nations Treaty Series, 1577, pp. 3-178. Available at https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child

[3] Richman BD, Schulman KA. Restoring Physician Authority in an Era of Hospital Dominance. JAMA. 2022;328(24):2400-2401. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2022.23610

[4] Bruch JD, Roy V, Grogan CM. The Financialization of Health in the United States. N Engl J Med. 2024;390(2):178-182. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMms2308188

[5] Rosenbaum L. Beyond Moral Injury - Can We Reclaim Agency, Belief, and Joy in Medicine?. N Engl J Med. 2024;390(10):951-955. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMms2311042