Adams says every doctor should be a heart specialist

(CNN) -- The real Patch Adams thinks every doctor should be a heart specialist -- a merry heart, that is.

"If you actually are a doctor and admitted it, you'd say, 'I don't cure a huge percentage, I don't have a 50 percent cure rate ... (but) I can have a 100 percent compassion rate,'" Adams said.

Adams, the doctor who inspired the Robin Williams movie now in theaters, says humility and humor break the ice between healer and patient -- and that helps good medicine work better.

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CNN's Dan Rutz talks with the real-life Patch Adams
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In life, as in the film, Adams can drive a straight-laced profession bonkers.

"You have a brilliant mind, and like many brilliant people you don't necessarily think the rules apply," a character in the movie tells Adams, as played by Williams.

To the real-life Adams, silliness is a virtue.

He travels the globe, showing other physicians the practical uses of jokes. But his dream is for a hospital back home in West Virginia, where he would prove his methods in day-to-day practice.

Adams travels around the world, showing other doctors the practical uses of jokes

At the Gesundheit Institute, as he calls it, doctors would work for peanuts, and patients would never be billed. Thirteen years into his vision, however, Adams has yet to raise the $25 to $50 million he needs to get it off the ground.

Some ask whether Adams' failure to raise the money needed for his hospital is because few people can take him seriously. But Adams says there is nothing in medical journals showing you have to stay serious to get well, and he contends the opposite is true.

"And yet the influence of the adult world--this is the pain paradigm shouting -- serious is what you want to be taken," Adams said.

Adams hopes the movie will bring new life to his idealism. He admits "gesundheit" isn't the whole answer to health care reform. There are 10,000 ways, he says, to replace greed with grins.

Senior Medical Correspondent Dan Rutz contributed to this report.