Several months ago a friend went to one of the hospitals in Dallas to have surgery. She needed to have her arteries cleared, blockages were slowly killing her. The surgeon did a very good job although the surgery was far more complex than he had believed it would be when he started. That was where things started to go wrong.
First the surgery was so complex and long that her body had swollen while she was under the knife and he decided to not close after the operation until some of the swellings had subsided. To enable this, he decided to place her in a medically induced coma. I had never heard of this before but after an explanation of the reasons it seemed reasonable. After a few days, they took her back into surgery and closed. Then they gradually woke her from her coma. Things were progressing nicely when the inevitable happened.
A nurse in the hospital screwed up and gave her an overdose. Fortunately, the discovery of the overdose happened very quickly, the miscreant nurse admitted rather than attempting to cover up the error. This meant that medical intervention for the overdose occurred very quickly. I can not blame the nurse as humans do make mistakes, it's how you correct your mistakes that are of the upmost importance. This nurse did very well in that respect.
That overdose very nearly killed Donna and her recovery from that point was slow and very painful to her family. In fact, it is the unfortunate truth that things simply went from bad to far worse. After a couple of weeks, the hospital had her strong enough that she could be moved to a facility which could provide rehabilitation therapy to help her recover from the effects of the combination of surgery and overdose by medical personnel.
In hind site, it would have perhaps been better to allow the hospital in Dallas to move her to a facility associated with them. Unfortunately, Dallas is a long way from home. Home is in a small city a few miles north of the Oklahoma border with Texas. There was a facility which was nationally famous and was in a town about seventy miles north from the Dallas hospital on US 69/75 and only about twenty miles south of home. (I refrain from naming names not because the facilities involved would have any leg to stand on in regard to their incompetence and malpractice but rather do to the fact that they all have lawyers on retainer ready to make life very expensive on anyone who has the audacity of pointing a finger at their incompetence, negligence, and malicious intent.)
Once Donna was ensconced in that world famous facility (unfortunately not hyperbole) things rapidly got worse. For the first couple of days, she was doing well and starting to recover her strength. She was up to being capable of performing several hours of exercise daily when suddenly she started to swell up very rapidly. One of the doctors associated with this so-called (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation gave her a drug which she was allergic to. This allergy was on her medical record under, surprise, surprise, surprise, (sorry, I let Gomer come out and play) allergies. But, instead of looking at said medical record, this genius asked a woman who was in severe pain, still confused slightly from the month long ordeal she had undergone, if she was allergic to some long medical name for a particular drug. Donna is allergic to sulfa drugs, any sulfa drugs. I wonder just how many people other than doctors would recognize the name of a pain medication as being a member of the sulfa family of drugs. This allergic reaction landed her in the hospital associated with that so called (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation with severe swelling.
Now is where Obama care kicked in. Due to changes in Medicare, which were precipitated due to Obama care, just over two weeks after the hospital sent her back to the (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation, they sent her home. Medicare only pays for a set number of days of Rehabilitation regardless of the severity of the problem involved. If you think I exaggerate, the family was informed two weeks before her discharge date of the date she would be discharged. My question is how can a real medical professional know the condition of a patient two weeks before the date in question. It sounds more like a bureaucrat made an arbitrary decision and to heck with the medical realities. (Thank you most assuredly, Mr. President.) So here we are, Donna is at home, and her husband must hire someone to come in and help him with her. This is also not paid for by Medicare because the changes that have been made in the health care system prevent real care from being given.
One more thing you need to know about Donna, she has sleep apnea. Without her CPAP machine, she may stop breathing at night. This is also on her medical records. At home she has a machine, however after only one day at home the nurse who was caring for her informed her husband that she needed to be in the hospital due to her breathing.
Unfortunately, he took her back to the hospital which had discharged her to the (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation. The emergency room admitted her, where an incompetent doctor, who's name, unfortunately, sounds very much like my last name, discharged her without telling the ward nurses or her husband. I personally guarantee that there is no relation between me and this idiot. Charles then spent several hours arguing with the medical staff that she needed oxygen and that she should be on monitors to make sure that she was not having problems breathing. Yes, the alert hospital staff was refusing a woman with breathing problems access to oxygen. (Please don't get me started on incompetent doctors denying oxygen to patients who are having difficulty breathing.)
After almost twelve hours, they promised him that she would be placed on monitors as they kicked him off the floor stating that visiting hours were over. What happened next, in my opinion, was tantamount to attempted murder. She was not placed on the promised monitor and she was left unattended in the hospital room. Sometime during three hours she was left unattended, and without monitor, she stopped breathing. This is not all that unusual in persons with sleep apnea. As soon as she was found, they coded her and shocked her and brought her back. That was almost two months ago and she is still in a coma.
I devoutly wish that I could tell you that that was the end, but it is not. The hospital sent out an administrator to "ASSIST THE FAMILY". Normally one might assume that a hospital administrator would have some training in medicine. I learned differently. This (unnamed) female administrator in a very expensive business suit was an attorney, although she never told anyone that. We were tipped off anonymously by one of the nurses who thought that the hospital was not performing to the standards required for a legitimate hospital in the United States of America. Within days of the unfortunate incident, she had called in all of the family and attempted to convince them to pull the plug. As it was a lawyer, who called them in I feel sure that it was more legally motivated in protecting the hospital than medically indicated by Dona's condition.
I should note that this same administrator has attempted to convince Charles to allow a feeding tube to be inserted into her belly against the advice of the surgeon who would be required to do the job. Turns out that there was a good chance that the insertion of the tube would be fatal due to a previous belly surgery that Donna had had. This was why the doctor did not want to do the surgery and it makes one wonder if that was not the reason that the lawyer, protecting the hospital wanted it done. After all if she dies during a procedure authorized by her husband there is no medical liability for the hospital.
Since that time the staff of the hospital has, first informed the family that they will pay for all medical bills which ecru in the hospital. They have given assurances that Donna is receiving the best care possible. Strangely during this time they have pulled every trick they can think of to prevent her being move to another, perhaps, more compliant medical facility. A medical facility which specializes in coma victim care. They blocked outside consultations by other neurologists, and at this point are trying to force the family to move Donna to a "long term facility".
Now things get even more interesting. It appears that a few years ago the hospitals, and doctors, in the state of Texas lobbied the state legislator to allow them to write the tort reform bill which was placed on medical malpractice in the state of Texas. In Texas, there is no limit on the judgment of medical expenses granted in a lawsuit but there is a three hundred thousand dollar limit on pain and suffering and there are no legal expenses allowed. This means that all costs related to the lawsuit must come out of the three hundred thousand pain and suffering portion of the suit. These costs include you lawyers, expert witness as to the malpractice involved, investigators even transportation and lodging for witness. The hospital, on the other hand, has lawyers on staff who deal with the annoyance of a pesky lawsuit without any additional cost to the hospital. Also the for every thousand dollars billed on your hospital bill the actual cost will vary, depending on exactly the type of service involved, from five to ten dollars.
Don't believe me? Look at this example then.
(hospital staff is calculated in positions, not persons)
One Hospital Ward Patients 20 @1500 per Day 30000
RN 1 @720 per day 720
LPN 1 @480 per day 480
Orderly 1 @240 per day 240
Housekeeper 1 @30 per day 30 NOTE:
(figure 3 hours per ward per day)
Power and other utilities 20 @10 per patient 200
Cleaning supplies 10
(generous to hospital)
Drugs: for hospital 200: Patient 10000 (as billed)
Patient cost (all patients in ward) = 40000 billed per patient day 20000
Hospital cost = 1880 cost per patient day 94
Sure there are a few other costs but with this accounting to less than 1% of the billed amount I don't think that the large corporations which own the hospitals are hurting very much. When the average business has a margin of 50% gross and one of the big box stores may have 75%, I think 90% plus is more than sufficient margin for them to pay for the lights and garbage. OH wait I included the electric bill and garbage in the bills above, how silly of me. This is especially true in a state like Texas where the cost of Malpractice Insurance is negligible due to the tort legislation which is so totally one-sided in favor of the hospital. One of these days I may talk a little about the real reason that things are so expensive in this day and age: INSURANCE, but I digress.
What is even more annoying is that hospitals like the one which must remain unnamed, but happens to be in a city approximately seventy miles north of Dallas and is associated with the world famous (blank, blank) Center for Rehabilitation have the ability to hide behind this tort reform to commit what is in a very real sense murder. I am certain that Donna is not the first victim of their incompetence, or in this case perhaps, malicious intent due to the attitude of the attending doctor and the nurses on duty.
One other damning point about that hospital. Charles almost immediately demanded that the doctor involved be removed from her case. If he had known who that doctor was, that doctor had been assigned to her case by the hospital behind Charles back without consulting him, he would not have allowed the arrogant idiot withing a mile of her, as she had had problems with him the year before. The hospital administrators, remember she is a lawyer but she was hiding this small fact at the time, the reaction was that this was "Very serious and would be detrimental to the doctor involved." Note the extreme care for the patient and her family. There was absolutely no regard for Donna or Charles only for the fact that it would besmirch the reputation of the doctor involved to have it appear in the medical record that he had been removed from a case. When Charles was insistent, she finally agreed to his removal. She lied. He was not removed as her primary care doctor. Charles once again upon seeing this doctor name on the board in her room demanded, for more diplomatically than I would have been capable of, that he is removed. Again the lawyer lied and said that she would personally see to his removal. The next day when we returned he was still the doctor of record. There was a very long discussion with the lawyer again to which I listened attentively.
I should mention at this point that Charles would make Dale Carnage blush when it comes to persuasion. He never once raised his voice or parted from the reasonable tone he used to demand once again that the doctor who was in large part responsible for Dona's condition was not suited to be her doctor. He never once mentioned the things which were running through my mind that that arrogant piece of work would conspire with this female who was trying to dazzle Charles with BS while she shifted her legs trying to give me a look up her skirt hoping to distract my train of thought and making sure that she shifted her body so as to present the most favorable view of her low cut top under her business suit. I had to wonder if perhaps her primary occupation did not involve more than the practice of law.
Not once during all of this had he mentioned lawyers to the hospital or to their pet lawyer, although he had been discussing the condition of his wife with one of his friends who just happens to be one of the very best attorneys in the country. It was Dan who informed him of the condition of Texas medical tort perversion which protected the doctors and hospitals and allowed the victims of their malpractice to assume the position they deserved in the eyes of the hospitals. That position being surf to be stomped on and forced into slave labor to supply their masters with everything their bolted egos could desire. (No before you ask, Dan does not practice malpractice law or criminal law. Knowing Dan as well as I do, I think that both of these are just a bit too dirty for his tastes. Dan is, after all something of an enigma. He is an honest lawyer. He is also a very good lawyer as has been learned the hard way by his opponents.)
As to date, the hospital is still fighting allowing Donna to be moved to a component hospital which does not have a vested interest in her dying. They are circling their wagons to try to prevent any legal action against them by the family. I should state that this does involve the mysterious disappearance of hospital records and I have to wonder if a few more of them have not been modified?
The bottom line is that in today's world, doctors no longer work for themselves. All of them work for the corporations and these corporations are intent on the dollars in your pocket and not on the quality of the medical care they provide. I fear that if you truly look at the rising cost of health care, nine out of every ten dollars of the cost is either fraudulent charges or massively inflated over charges. Think about it, a doctor visit today varies from one hundred to two hundred dollars, most paid by insurance but still paid. This visit consists of your showing up on, or before, time for your appointment at the doctor's office. Almost always you have to wait from one to three hours past the time of the apartment to actually see the doctor. The actual medical visit will be approximately one minute of paperwork, followed by less than two minutes with a nurse. Next, after another wait maybe of between ten minutes to an hour, you see a doctor for about one minute. Then the one minute of paperwork required for you to pay for the doctors services. I don't know about you but one of my doctors treats about a one hundred patients a day plus hospital visits in addition to this. Last time I checked my math that comes out to a total of Twenty thousand dollars a day for less than three and one-half hours of actual work. Please note that this does not include the patient charges at the hospital. It's no wonder that I have literally seen doctors offices have Brinks trucks pull up to transport the deposit. Who else do you know that makes over six thousand dollars per hour.
Perhaps I should point out one more small point. Almost none of the doctors in town actually gets that kind of pay day. All of them work for the corporation which owns the hospital. As employees of the corporation, they receive a salary, a rather good one and receive benefits such as medical and malpractice insurance paid for by the corporation. It is the corporation which is making the six thousand dollars per hour, per doctor. I wonder what it really costs them?
OH well, where else could I have had a hotel room which cost nine thousand dollars a day, other than the local hospital. At that price, I could almost afford the Imperial Suite at the Hotel Ritz in Paris.
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