In the category of “duh” , I would like to submit that some smart people have figured out that doctors are more qualified to run hospitals than business administrators. Sure, it may be that good hospitals just happen to have physician CEOs, or physical CEO just happen to chose good hospitals to run, but I think it is probably because doctors know more about health care than freaking business majors!
For example, I don’t see a doctor trying to save money by reusing needles, which is the stupid thing an out-patient surgery center in Los Vegas decided to do. To quote: “clinic staff told inspectors they had been ordered by management to reuse the vials and syringes.” Turns out that move may have infected 40,000 with the potentially fatal hepatitis C virus and/or to HIV. Because some numskull figured out sterilized needles were expensive, 40,000 people may get an early grave. I’m going out on a limb here, and declare that manager an asshat.
Although to be fair, there is at least one cases where a doctor was that damn dumb. Robert Stokes, a dermatologist from Grand Rapids, Michigan was sent to prison for medical fraud … and he just happened to reuse a bunch of needles too. There are also two cases, one in Nebraska and one in Oklahoma, where a nurse used the same needle on multiple patients. I’m sure there are more.
Still, I cannot help but think that hospitals should be run by doctors. The more middle men, the more bullshit, which means that the more money needs to be spread around more so the more stuff costs. More is the word, people. I also think hospitals should be non-profit organizations … just enough money to pay all the staff & buy supplies, with no investors and stockholders and chairmen and other such monkey business.
Did y’all know that France was declared the best medical system on the planet by the World Health Organization? It nationalized health care, where human life is considered more valuable than the bottom line. Of course, it’s not utopian, which allows naysayers to point out the lack of achievable perfection and sneer at universal health care. Of course, number one is a hell of a lot more utopian than no. 37, which is where the US ranks despite spending more on health care per person than anywhere in the world.
I wonder how Sweet Babou feels about learning French?
You know what I like, Fokker? You mentioned both sides.
Yeah, medical people reused needles – but that was based on their own dumbness. An instruction from up-high is just stoooopid.
Following an instruction like that is WRONG. They have a responsibility to patients to report that sort of thing to authorities.
I am astounded that hospitals are allowed to profit. It’s a total mindfuck from my Canadian perspective.
And as for “bureaucrats will decide if you can get your treatment”, that argument that so many American asshats have against UHC, um, that’s what happens to them NOW with insurance! It’s pretty rare that a bureaucrat gets to decide that someone doesn’t get treatment here. We have a list of shit that is covered. A list of shit that isn’t. If it’s on the ‘not covered’ list, you can ask them to cover it if it’ll save your life. If they still won’t (RARE), you go to the media.
Now, that being said, there’s lots of shit that they don’t cover that they bloody well should. Like insulin pumps. ABA therapy for Autism. Prescription meds. Dentistry. Chiropractors. Podiatrists. Naturopathic medicine.
My mom is on dialysis. Her kidneys failed and her doctor failed to catch it because he’s an asshat of EPIC proportions. She’s on meds like whoa. Dialysis doesn’t cost her a cent. Her meds cost her next to nothing because the kidney foundation pays for all of her kidney meds and what they don’t cover, her province does (she’d pay heavily here). Dad had bypass surgery. He later had aortic anuerysm surgery, and then died from the complications and subsequent heart attacks. None of that cost us our life savings. There were no medical bills. No insurance companies to fight with. It was just paid.
It’s a “total mind fuck” for us here living with it too. And ya know, wrong since they are not putting patient care first.
Julie
There is an argument for hospitals making money beyond paying wages and covering inventory … and that argument is to make enough profit to plow back into capital improvements. You have to make money to grow, to innovate, to improve – to renovate when the building gets old, to upgrade the technology, to attract new & gifted talent in medicine.
If my local hospitals were plowing lots of money back into technology, into research, into continuing education for their employees, for constantly searching out & training top notch staff, I wouldn’t be nearly as irritated at the cost of using their services.
What I don’t like is that hospitals are for-profit in the sense that they must satisfy share-holders. I understand that you might need to pull together investors to get off the ground, to endow the facility, and those investors need to be paid back. But there’s got to be a better way than turning hospitals into publicly owned corporations, where the primary responsibility is to the shareholders, and patient concerns are attended to as a risk management concern rather than the primary focus of the institution.
Making improvements, innovation, and infrastructure can still fall within a non-profit model.
Being a non-profit doesn’t mean that you CAN’T make a profit; it means that your balance sheet can’t carry a profit. If a not-for-profit institution makes a profit over a year, that money gets invested either into infrastructure, improvements, etc. or into an account to earn interest to be used for improvements or to cover years in which a loss occurs. Being a for-profit institution means that the primary goal of the institution is to make a profit. Everything else is second, or third, or . . .. So it does actually make sense for a hospital to be a not-for-profit institution and have as its guiding principle the well-being of the patients in the hospital not making profits for its share-holders.