Bad debt causes Arkansas hospital to implement unpopular policy – make a $50 down payment before you can see the emergency physician. What!?!?! That’s more than a carton of smokes and a case of PBR combined!
Anger management classes are down the hall. Cape Cod punk getting treated for cuts to his hand he sustained when he punched a mirror then puts emergency department security guard in headlock and starts punching him in the face when security guard started “staring at him.” Lighten up, Francis … oh, and enjoy your stay the Greybar Motel.
Deaconess Hospital emergency department closure “disastrous” and isn’t addressing “critical problems facing emergency patients” according to ACEP president Angela Gardner. Spot on, doc.
Michigan’s Medicaid system is out of control. One in 6 Michigan residents qualify for Medicaid and it covers 40 percent of all births and 70 percent of all nursing home care. How will Michigan close the Medicaid budget deficit? Tax doctors on their gross receipts. Yeah. that will work. Up to 45% of Michigan docs already refuse Medicaid patients. Watch that number jump.
Good news: Visits to Canadian hospital emergency department decrease during Olympics. Bad news: Number of patients suffering from drunkenness and assaults spiked. During the Olympic games, hospitals in downtown Vancouver were seeing an average of 17 assault victims per day – triple the usual number.
Medical malpractice cases at all time low and total malpractice expenditures only 0.6% of total healthcare budget … according to Public Citizen. Oh, tort reform in Texas is a failure and a 1999 IOM study showed that doctors kill 99,000 patients every year due to avoidable errors. Yeah, that about covers it.
Phil Howard speaks on tort reform. Inspiring – at least to the non-lawyer commenters. (Thanks to Mad Rocket Scientist for the link)
When everything is an emergency, nothing is an emergency. Pittsburgh man calls 911 ten times in two days complaining of abdominal pain. Unfortunately, Pittsburgh just got socked with a snowstorm, there was two feet of snow on the ground, ambulances were unable to get through the roads, and paramedic calls were at twice their usual volume. At one point, 30 calls were waiting for ambulances to arrive. The man took pain pills and ended up dead.
Now the city plans to have firefighters respond to some 911 calls … between fighting fires, of course.
One commenter to a report of this incident on Medscape blogs noted that tax cuts can have the same effects of decreasing available personnel and increasing wait times. Another commenter stated that services in his area had been cut so thin that patients were better off taking a taxi.
Inner city emergency departments have nothing on Haiti after the earthquakes. Emergency physician Scott Plantz describes his experiences in a USA Today article.
There are certain things that I always carry in my pocket.
Focus On The Cost
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010Yeah, I agree with Howard Fineman. You got a problem with that?
Read his Newsweek article about his experiences being admitted to an Argentinian hospital and how he believes we should be focused on the costs of health care in this country.
His bill for a hospital stay with dehydration in Argentina: About $1500. Similar hospitalization in the US: $10,000 to $15,000 – if he was lucky. Money quote: “Most Americans have no idea how much their health care really costs, nor do they know how well it really works ….”
We desperately need price transparency in our health care system.
Look at the four systems in Pennsylvania that I reviewed in a previous post. If one hospital cost 4 times as much as another hospital for treating the same medical problem, would that affect anyone’s decision on where to go for medical care?
One commenter to the article noted that “Health services are often urgently needed and the consumer doesn’t have the time or inclination to shop around.” If people shop around for weeks to find the best deal on a car and spend all Sunday morning going through newspaper ads to find the cheapest head of broccoli at the grocery store, I have no sympathy for those who “don’t have the time or inclination” to research where they would want to go if their life was on the line or if they needed specialized surgery.
Regardless of what health care reform measures are taken, we still need to be educated consumers with our most important assets – our lives.
Posted in Funding Crisis, Health care reform, News Commentary | 39 Comments »