Hospitals are Bad for Your Health

My nephew had a spot of bad luck lately.  While riding his cycle, he attempted to take out some lady's windshield with his body.  He succeeded and the results were most unattractive.  Fortunately he's alive and not at all hideously disfigured.  He was taken to the local trauma center for the county, where they have taken great care of him.  If he ever wonders how people feel about him, he needs only to discover the flood of people in the waiting room the night of the accident.  Even the hospital employees were impressed.

Mrs. leftystrat went to visit her nephew the other day and liked the place so much, she decided to stay a while.  Somebody noticed her getting wobbly and they gave her a free ride to the emergency room.  Two event-filled days later, she was discharged with no idea what happened.  The doctors were clueless and the discharge summary was riddled with errors and inconsistencies.

This was the same hospital.

We have a genuine healthcare crisis- this is no secret.  It's badly broken and waiting for collapse.  Meanwhile we pay and pay (recurring theme, regardless of industry).  I have some suggestions for hospitals, doctors, and patients to make things more efficient, hopefully resulting in less cost.


HOSPITALS / DOCTORS

• Talk to the patient.  Explain things concisely.  Be sure they understand.  Don't talk down.
• When you transfer a patient, WRITE THINGS DOWN.  COMMUNICATE.  The new unit will then know what happened and can treat the patient accordingly.
• Don't be an ass - the situation is tough enough already.
• Don't give canned/useless answers.  The patient is (hopefully) not an idiot.
• "What's the matter?" is not a confidence-inspiring question to ask family.
• When you are told the information is in the chart, don't tell the patient it isn't or you don't have it.
• Outside doctors prescribed meds for the patient: you should dispense them.  If you have a problem, contact the prescribing doctor - don't ignore the situation.
• Every action should not involve six hours of waiting for a doctor or paperwork.

PATIENTS

• Question everything.
• If you are not satisfied with an answer, ask again until you are.
• If the person you ask can't provide an answer, ask for someone who can.
• Hold staff to promises or deadlines.
• Question everything.
• Follow up.  If you didn't get the test results, make a call.
• If you aren't able, have a spouse, friend or family member act as your advocate.
• Keep all of your vital information up to date for you and your advocate.
• Question everything.

Things have changed drastically over the years.  People used to consider doctors infallible and unquestionable.  That might have worked before HMOs but now it's a recipe for bad health.  Many doctors and staff are horribly overworked and might miss something important.  Your health is YOUR responsibility - ignore it at your own peril.

If you are a passive patient, things will just happen to you.  You could stay in the hospital days longer than necessary.  Your care may be substandard.  You may receive unwanted, painful procedures that aren't necessary.  You may get the wrong meds or insufficient meds.  Know your meds and all important information.  Write it down. 

Example: My wife spent a day at the mercy of the hospital, largely getting nowhere.  The following day she started asking questions and taking down names.  The care improved exponentially and she was discharged by noon.  Even the head nurse complimented her on her ability to advocate for herself and make things happen.  Things happened for her on her schedule, not the doctors'.  This was all because she acted, even though great care should be standard.

Do you want to be a passive patient or do you want good healthcare?

Hospital Hijinks

It's been a rough few weeks, as evidenced by my less than stellar output.  Hopefully the forest can now be distinguished from the trees (as well as the logging equipment) and I can return to some sort of (ab)normalcy.

If you have ever been in the hospital, you couldn't wait to get out.  Getting out of the hospital, whether emergency room or inpatient, is a very long, involved process beginning with doctors telling you that you're going to be discharged.  Hours later, nurses start telling you to get ready.  Then more of those wondrous hours go by and you hear from nobody (except the person collecting the television fee).

Just a few short hours later, you wander over to a convenient medical-looking person and ask them when, exactly, you're going to go home.  You feel just a tiny bit closer to your house after the janitor you just asked heads off to find a nurse (the only one who knows anything at all in the entire building).

"Hmmmm," the nurse says... "the doctor said he was doing your paperwork and then you could go home."

You inquire whether the nurse has seen said doctor in the past few millenia, to which the answer is always a resounding NO.  Being the helpful sort she is, she wanders off to locate Dr. Flatzenfuss.

But a few short hours later, the nurse locates Dr. Flatzenfuss, who is on his way to the floor to do the paperwork.  Little do you know that on his way is code for `hold your breath, sucker'.

Don't bother asking why, if the doctor said you were being discharged, he didn't fill out the paperwork on the floor on which he was working at that moment.  The answer is a medical secret to which literally no one knows the answer.

In case you're wondering if I made this whole thing up, the answer is no.  I actually sat by, helpless, while my wife was at the mercy of these jokers.  But as you well know, I get distracted, and more importantly, bored easily.  With all that spare time, I decided to think up a few ways to speed up the discharge process a bit:

1. Stand out in the hall yelling MRSA! 
2. Keep demanding that the nurses line up for my inspection
3. Water ballooning the residents
4. Hospital bed races
5. Hitting the code button to call the nurses.
6. Referring to the md's as medical disappointments (or mentally deficient)
7. Hook the wireless heart monitor up to someone else.
8. Phoning the desk and ordering pizzas for other rooms
9. Every time the monitor bells ring, look dazed and threaten to assassinate RFK
10. Start filling out your own discharge paperwork
11. Make the beds in other patients rooms
12. Take food orders in other rooms
13. The old carrot sticks up the nose trick
14. Asking the doctors if they mind if you smoke near the oxygen
15. Inciting the other patients to riot
16. Programming the heart monitor to say you're dead. 

Needless to say, I managed to get the eight hour discharge window down to a more respectable four hours.


I leave you with this thought: 

If cell phone radiation is bad for you, why do hospitals use wireless telemetry, attaching the transmitter to the patient's (open) gown?