hospital fined for treating patients too quickly

[david uk]

this is madness...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/suffolk/5237824.stm

the UK Health Service has been in crisis for a number of years now, largely due to underfunding for years and years and also the fact that it is now run larely by bureaucrats and finance managers rather than doctors.

Unlike in the US, treatment here is free to everyone, which is good, but this kind of situation is bizarre.... the artcle reads like a sketch from Monty Python.

[Eva]

One can die within four months! I don't have words for this... :confused:

Eva

[Robert the Bard]

I would hope that that's only for regularly scheduled stuff, and not emergency care? :confused:

[ponytail]

That's one of the craziest things I've ever heard.:eek:

[Dee]

That's just nuts!

[DaveM]

We have a somewhat similar situation in the U.S. in that hospitals are fond of "freeing beds" by discharging patients as soon as they are well enough to breathe on their own. This is especially true when one's bills are being paid by Medicaid or an HMO (can anyone else remember when HMOs were going to save the world?). For decades, the medical industry has been promoting "in and out surgery", among many other terms, as "advances" in medical care. What such things involve, far more often, is dumping patients on the sidewalk while they still have open wounds. After all, an empty bed can always be filled with someone doing something more profitable than healing.

Strangely, psychiatric wards tend to do the opposite, keeping patients for the duration of the insurance when possible. In all likelihood, this is because the cost of running a psych ward is about that of running a daycare center. No medical procedures, minimal staff--basically three hots and a cot, billed at the same rate for any other hospital bed.

A sad situation, and largely the result of medicine practiced by lawyers, accountants, and administrators instead of by doctors. The United States now spends the highest percentage of its Gross Domestic Product on medical care of any nation on earth.

One of many reasons why, inside every American, there's a Canadian just waiting to get out.

[AceOn6]

My sister in law is a visiting nurse and gets to "clean up and stabilize" all those early discharges. Approximately half of her patients have to go back and it would have been much better for all if they had just stayed an extra day or two. Lower cost, too.

[hoops]

i was in the NY presb, psych hospital about three years ago. if you ever get a chance to visit, the hallways are fabulous, the wards, on the other hand...well sterile is not a word i would use and all the prettiness is left outside the doors. one of the dr's had this power problem. it seems as thought if you felt you were ready to go home, you would stay as long as possible. if you felt you needed more time, he's find a way to get you out EVEN if you had no place to go. a few people i was in with were discharged and had no place to stay and all the halfway houses and such had at least 6 month waiting lists. i was living in supported housing st the time and invited a few of them to stay with me till they could find something else. of course most of them lived in the city and i about 90 min north so i had only two takers, one of whom stole my car, but then i was let out after she was cause i was doing well and she was on the up side of a serious bipolar episode and could not be medicated cause she was pregnant. even in psych hospitals more close to home i've heard dr's direst patients to be discharged to stay at the local walmart. of course i admit, have not been lucky enough to go to the ritzier psych hospitals tho i've heard about them and even seen one once. if you wait to have the ability to wait until you are very rich to become mentally ill, do it those places are nice. interesing story...the hospital i've sepnt the most time in about 2 1/2 out of five years) i cannot find the psych ward unless i'm being taken up there in a wheel chair and shackles...anyway. and it has been my experience in 5 different states that for the most part only psychiatrists are the only dr's that take mental illnesses seriously.
just my experience
peace
hoops

[DaveM]

I neglected to mention my encounter of a few months ago with "Dr. Frank Burns". Yes, he's still on the job, in part I suspect because he runs up a nice tab for the hospital. He tests for everything except what is ailing the patient, administers meds that have no effect at best, and eventually sends the patient home to get better on his/her own.

If you will recall my experience this past spring, I went into the emergency room one weekend with an allergy attack, needing an inhaler or at absolute most a shot of Bendryl. Instead I spent three days in the hospital being tested in pretty much every manner imaginable (mercifully, they left my GI tract alone) and finally was released without ever getting any Benadryl. Dr. Burns did, however, manage to run up a bill of over $8500 (including at least one $20 charge for one dose of Tylenol, which doesn't work for me anyway).

Despite a rather impassioned letter which I sent to my insurer, they paid the bill without hesitation.

At least I know what isn't wrong with me. And I now keep plenty of Benadryl and an inhaler right here at home.

[Agnes]

I'm at loss for words at this. :eek:

[david uk]

I would hope that that's only for regularly scheduled stuff, and not emergency care? :confused:

oh Robert I am sure that's only for scheduled stuff, not at all for Emergency things....

still bizarre tho