See more health care stories from around the web over at the satellite edition of this week’s update at ER Stories.net.
Innovative ideas for tort reform. If states don’t establish malpractice caps, doctors can contract with patients directly “to establish pre-determined rules for compensation in the case of injury due to physician negligence.”
Just like attorneys in Florida who contract around the statutory limits on attorney contingency fees. If clients don’t agree to higher contingent fees, then attorneys refuse to accept the client.
Can’t afford a dentist? You can always pull your kids’ teeth with pliers. Just don’t let the police catch you doing it. You might get charged with felony child abuse and spend 13 or so years in prison.
Patients gone wild … again. Midland, Michigan emergency department patient tries to bypass triage and walk directly into department after he burns himself when using gas to start a fire. When triage nurse tries to assess him, he beats her bloody with computer keyboard, then has to be tasered by police. Now he’s been charged with felony assault, obstructing police, and other assorted crimes. The kicker is that several people in the comments section of the article don’t think he should have been charged. After all, the pain he was in was causing him to act that way, and assault is “a risk of [the emergency department staff’s] jobs.”
I just shake my head and wonder if they would feel the same way had someone in pain attacked them in the emergency department. “No officer, don’t pull him off of me and don’t press charges. He was in pain.”
Some patients delay seeking medical care due to the cost. By the time they see the doctor, diseases such as cancer can get worse … and patients end up paying with their lives.
Patient in waiting room texts friends about other patients sitting with her. “The people next to me are three adults and two babies. The three adults are coordinating their stories to get oxycontin….”
All the patients have to do is tell the docs they’ll send in bad patient satisfaction ratings and they’ll probably score their drugs.
Don’t bother counting on Medicare to bail you out when you’re sick, either. If planned cuts to the system go into effect, President Obama’s chief actuary stated that many providers would be “unwilling or unable to continue providing services.”
But the care is “free,” right?
When too much safety can be a bad thing. Remember how Windows Vista had incessant warnings about potentially dangerous programs? After a while you got so fed up with seeing false alarms that you just blindly hit the “OK” button.
With medical alarms occurring on an average of every 90 seconds, the same “alarm fatigue” phenomenon is happening in hospitals — sometimes with deadly results.
And patient families are suing when deaths occur.
Interesting counterpoint to all the stories about increased medical access to health care in Texas after tort reform. There may be more doctors, but there are less patients receiving care.
Uninsured patients die of treatable diseases because they delay seeking medical help or have long waits for appointments with specialists. One patient with Parkinson’s Disease waited nearly a year for an initial appointment with a neurosurgeon, then waited four more months to get an MRI. One third of patients in the Houston area lack insurance. Seventeen percent of children are uninsured, over one third don’t receive recommended medical and preventive care, and Texas ranks last in the country for access to children’s mental health care. One fifth of women don’t receive first trimester prenatal care.
To save money, Governor Rick Perry cut payments to medical providers, underfunded Medicaid, and cut 2/3 of the funding to women’s health clinics.
What’s the right answer?
Just another reminder that your job is never secure. Hospital CEO making $1 million/year tries to save hospital money by cutting nursing staff pay and replacing emergency physician group that has been caring for patients more than 13 years.
Excuse me while I wipe my butt on those privacy curtains. Study shows that hospital privacy curtains contaminated with bacterial in 41 of 43 cases. Often the culprit is either MRSA (24%) or gut bacteria (66%). In 40% of the cases, dangerous vancomycin resistant enterococci were found. Changing the curtains doesn’t do much to help the problem, either – after being changed, new curtains were recontaminated with the same organisms within a week.
Ron Paul in a pro-con debate with USA Today editors over mandated health insurance. Then Ron Paul takes home a debate win in Orlando. Wait. No he doesn’t. Fox publishes poll results showing Ron Paul with a commanding win, then pulls the poll results and pretends that Mitt Romney won the debate.
The answer in Texes to make healthcare more available, is the same as it is in other states, make it cheaper. At present, the major factors that make other things cheaper are illeagal by CMS and therefore insurance contracts. I and my hospital can not have a sale, we cant bundle services to make them cheaper, we cant offer discounted alternatives. There is no competition. We need to put Wallmart in charge of healthcare, instead it is run like the post office.
An interesting point about the situation in Florida is that not only do attoneys contract around contingency fees, they also make sure in the contract that all disputes go to arbitration. For what reason, to make sure they dont get hit with the huge legal fees.
This isn’t a political blog, but about the Ron Paul poll…
It looks like the poll that Fox News pulled was a meaningless internet “anyone can click” poll, with only minimal checking to prevent multiple votes from the same individuals, and none to make sure the voter even watched the debate. Anyone with even minor internet skills can figure out how to get around checks and vote many times, let alone posting on a partisan blog saying “click here!”.
OK, so acknowledge that the poll has statistical weaknesses and leave the results up for everyone to view and discuss.
Why pull the results and then pretend like someone else won the debate – using the same statistical method and having the same statistical weaknesses that were used to obtain the original results?
And if Fox is going to argue that the poll was meaningless after the results, then why create the poll to begin with?
To me, this is akin to unethical medical studies that keep and report only the data that supports their position.
Frustrating, maddening and depressing – all articles.
the curtain contamination – gross! How many times have we all slid along them or had them resting against our bodies ..for entire shits day in and day out. Why doesn’t medical staff pick up these infections with constant exposure?
Often wondered that myself – and it’s amazing I don’t have MRSA either.
…”entire shits”…
Freudian slip?
Oh no! SHIFTS ..entire SHIFTS!
Ha! Not Freudian ..just tired at 01:30 Or power of suggestion.
The biggest reason for most of Texas’s problems with no insurance?
Illegal aliens.
I can guarantee you if someone did a study, they would find that to be true in many states. Of the thirty million claim of uninsured they include Illegal Immigrants (I-2′s). In reality, based on the loose stats, if it were just American citizens it would roughly be 16 million. Not as dire as the media would play it for a Country with 310 million people. And of that number, it can be broken down into those who choose not to have it, and that does not mean they cannot afford to pay themselves!
I do not recall the exact numbers and since my first patient just walked in I don’t have time to look, but I remember a breakdown that went roughly like this:
40-45 million uninsured:
15-20 million illegal
5 million qualify for medicare/medicaid and just have to do the paperwoek but won’t
5 million could get insurance thru work but choose not to
5 million could get insurance thru private market and could afford it but choose not to(the healthy indestructible young).
Actual number of truly uninsured and don’t have an option was in the 5-10 million range.
For a trillion dollars we’ll give those 10 million insurance at the cost of $100,000 each for 10 years so $10,000/year each. That is 2-3 times the typical cost/year/person for actual health costs.
“(the healthy indestructible young).”
Hells yeah! I’m maximizing my paycheck by minimizing my health insurance and vacation time. Insurance companies play the odds all the time…I’m just beating them at their game.