Wednesday, March 31, 2004
95 percent of all people who go into a hospital with chest pains leave without knowing the cause.
My mother was one of the 5 percent who found out what was wrong, and that was mostly because my dad knew how to battle our HMO and the medical system in this country. Because of this my mom is now fine, and she knows how to treat her problems.
Not everyone is so lucky. This experience (and all my hospital experiences recently) have taught me a lot about the medical system in this country.
1. HMOs are bastards. They will try to get out of paying for anything. But if you pressure them at all, they give in. When I hurt my eye a couple years ago, they almost didn't cover a doctor visit.
2. The machines we have now are amazing. CT scan, MRI, etc etc. Companies like GE and Siemans make more than just home appliances and cell phones.
3. Doctors want to kick you out of the hospital as fast as possible. You think they would be scared of lawsuits if they let people go too quickly. Reminds me of Fight Club. If the probability that someone released early will die and sue the hospital, times the average court settlement, is higher than the cost of the extra tests, then they don't run those tests.
4. Doctor's often don't really know that much. My dad named the five possible causes of my mom's pain before the doctor even showed up, and if he hadn't pushed them to test for those causes, they might have missed it.
5. Some doctors are definitely better than others. One of our family friends is a cardiologist in Santa Maria. Over the phone he named my mom's problem days before the doctors here figured it out.
6. You have to bitch and scream to stay in the hospital, have them run tests, and get the results. Otherwise they won't do it. At one point we were sitting around for hours for test results. We asked the nurse if they had arrived. The lied and said no. Then she looked for them and of course they were right there, who knows for how long.
One of the interesting things in our medical system is that hospitals can't afford to hire all the doctors they need. So when you are in the hospital for something, you are using their facilities and equipment and nurses, but the doctors are provided by your insurance company. Those doctors may have patients in several hospitals.
I wonder if this makes more sense: have 1 large hospital for a given area (Torrance currently has at least 3, maybe more). Those hospitals should hire all the staff they need, including doctors of each specialty. Since these hospitals are larger, they can afford it. Then there will just be emergency clinics scattered around town. In an emergency you go to the closest ER, and once you are stable you are moved to the large hospital.
Maybe these hospitals can be owned and run by the insurance company. But it seems like having everything in one place will make stuff move faster and more efficiently, thus reducing costs.
It's a tough problem. I'm not sure what the solution is.
My mother was one of the 5 percent who found out what was wrong, and that was mostly because my dad knew how to battle our HMO and the medical system in this country. Because of this my mom is now fine, and she knows how to treat her problems.
Not everyone is so lucky. This experience (and all my hospital experiences recently) have taught me a lot about the medical system in this country.
1. HMOs are bastards. They will try to get out of paying for anything. But if you pressure them at all, they give in. When I hurt my eye a couple years ago, they almost didn't cover a doctor visit.
2. The machines we have now are amazing. CT scan, MRI, etc etc. Companies like GE and Siemans make more than just home appliances and cell phones.
3. Doctors want to kick you out of the hospital as fast as possible. You think they would be scared of lawsuits if they let people go too quickly. Reminds me of Fight Club. If the probability that someone released early will die and sue the hospital, times the average court settlement, is higher than the cost of the extra tests, then they don't run those tests.
4. Doctor's often don't really know that much. My dad named the five possible causes of my mom's pain before the doctor even showed up, and if he hadn't pushed them to test for those causes, they might have missed it.
5. Some doctors are definitely better than others. One of our family friends is a cardiologist in Santa Maria. Over the phone he named my mom's problem days before the doctors here figured it out.
6. You have to bitch and scream to stay in the hospital, have them run tests, and get the results. Otherwise they won't do it. At one point we were sitting around for hours for test results. We asked the nurse if they had arrived. The lied and said no. Then she looked for them and of course they were right there, who knows for how long.
One of the interesting things in our medical system is that hospitals can't afford to hire all the doctors they need. So when you are in the hospital for something, you are using their facilities and equipment and nurses, but the doctors are provided by your insurance company. Those doctors may have patients in several hospitals.
I wonder if this makes more sense: have 1 large hospital for a given area (Torrance currently has at least 3, maybe more). Those hospitals should hire all the staff they need, including doctors of each specialty. Since these hospitals are larger, they can afford it. Then there will just be emergency clinics scattered around town. In an emergency you go to the closest ER, and once you are stable you are moved to the large hospital.
Maybe these hospitals can be owned and run by the insurance company. But it seems like having everything in one place will make stuff move faster and more efficiently, thus reducing costs.
It's a tough problem. I'm not sure what the solution is.