Watching Election Results from Hospital

November 7, 2010 at 10:14 am · Filed under Education, Health Insurance, Healthcare, Legislation

Not a pretty site, to be sure. When someone is on his or her knees for hours and they’re neither praying nor gardening, it’s usually a bad thing. That’s how I started my Saturday last week on Halloween eve. I ended that day with my first ever hospitalization. What I realize from my 6 day hospitalization is most of our voices, pens, and keyboards are silent about healthcare reform because most of us have not recently or ever experienced the need for major healthcare reform. So, while I’m still taking antibiotics, I thought I should share a thought or two.

Because my family lives blocks away from Abington Memorial Hospital, my sons can not go to or from school or my wife to or from work without passing by the hospital. We’ve had friends who’ve been hospitalized and have visited them, but no one in our immediate family had been admitted. We certainly had not been to the prestigious and highly touted Lenfest wing. Like most people who have visited Emergency Rooms late at night, I expected a long wait before the first test and even longer waits between tests. Instead, the tests were conducted quickly. I didn’t attribute the promptness witnessed to AMH’s ER becoming more proficient. Instead, I knew that meant I was in a bad situation.

My diagnosis: Diverticulitis. My prognosis: TBD, but I intend to do right, as the good Lord definitely has my full attention now. (This is what I remember a preacher years ago described as a ‘burning bush moment’. What you witness or experience is so spectacular, that like Moses, you’re forced to turn away from what you’ve been doing and turn completely toward HIM). I’m still in pain, and hope to physically return to work this week, but riding in cars over bumps has proven to be a major challenge. Fortunately, computers and cell phones allow some of us to work remotely (at least sometimes). Before I know it, I’ll be back in the office and barely remember that I was gone; so that’s why I’m writing today as a reminder for myself.

Big and powerful monied interests and concerns have misinformed and misled the American public to believe that most Americans are against healthcare reform. Untrue. The same 51% of the electorate that voted President Obama into office is still in favor of major healthcare reform. Yet, we have failed to be as effective with our arguments and have been reduced to virtual silence. We need to speak up and be heard. So, now is my time to speak, while I both have good insurance and had a recent opportunity to experience the best that our private insurance money can buy. What did I see?

Nursing

Nurses are more than the front line in healthcare delivery, as they’re really the folks who determine whether or not you’ll be made well and get discharged properly or not. [One of my neighbors is a nurse in the ER at AMH; so I always look for him when I have to take one of us there. He wasn’t on duty; so I didn’t bother to pursue further.] I had 2 exceptionally good nurses, but most of my nurses were disengaged and 1 had already ‘quit in place’ so they really needed to coached and counseled; reprimanded, put on notice; and to retire, respectively. At first, I thought “should I complain about 2 great nurses and 4 bad to really bad ones” and then I thought of my sons’ schooling. If either of my sons had 2 great teachers and 4 bad to really bad ones, I would be ‘camped outside’ of the Headmaster’s Office! Then I realized the problem: malaise has already overtaken American Education; it’s also gained a stronghold in American Healthcare and our indifference really threatens every facet of American Life.

As with Education Reform and ensuring that we get better quality teachers in our classrooms and rewarding them financially, in a similar way, we must get more and better nurses into our hospitals. We need more nurses so that we are not overworking them. I don’t think for a minute that 2 of the 4 ‘bad’ nurses started that way. They’ve simply given up on a system that has clearly given up on them.

Doctors

My biggest complaint about nurses — both the good ones and the bad — is you can not get any rest while hospitalized because if you fall asleep, some nurse informs the others so someone can awaken you to take your temperature and blood pressure and give you another needle shot! Doctors don’t do the ‘dirty work’. They stroll in and look to explain in very generic terms what’s happening to you. In fact, thanks to WebMD, MedPage Today, etc. doctors do not spend the amount of time and attention that they should reviewing details so that patients know that the ‘road to recovery’ will be long and slow. They assume (rightly) that we’re all heading ‘online’ as soon as possible to get the details about what’s happening to us. So, instead of the doctors dealing with the difficult details, they leave that to available online medical resources. I don’t appreciate that assuming we ‘figure it out’ for a couple of reasons: 1) I didn’t go to Med School, the doctor did. Just as the doctor was quick to remind me not to self diagnosis because s/he is the doctor, that argument is equally valid on the other side of the situation, Dr. Doctor. 2) When I finally receive my health insurance bill — Paid for by Privatized Health Insurance — among the many line items will be a series of ‘Consults’. Those consult charges will be for the long line of doctors who blazed a trail into my room on that first day of hospitalization. Each of a ‘baker’s dozen’ doctors came in and repeated what the other 7 or 8 had already stated. Why? Those visits added no value and only raised this patient’s cortisol levels.

Bottom Line on Health Care Costs

It may be easy for some to simply accept that the health insurer will cover 90% of my hospital costs and that I should be happy to only have to ‘pick up’ 10%. Those observers; however, are not looking at healthcare — nor the need for continued healthcare reform; not the rollback of those already achieved — through proper lenses. Why should anyone ‘pick up’ 90% or even 10% of what I consider ‘bogus’ charges. I can’t wait to see what the cost will be for my Tylenol! What makes me even more upset is that because of my employer sponsored private health insurance, I’m simply another ‘unwilling participant/contributor’ to the rising cost of healthcare in our nation.

When one reviews our nation’s labor history, what you see is that employers did not always offer benefits. In fact, medical benefit coverage was added after WWII as US employers needed to compete against one another for talent and wanted to appeal to those returning from military service. Because the US has not made education the priority that it should be; especially in math and science, it will take more than the removal of healthcare costs to put us back on a level competitive plain. Still, the removal of healthcare costs from all businesses’ balance sheets will remove a major drain on cash flow. The only way that can happen is with government medical insurance or Medicare.

Summary

As I watched the MidTerm Elections — this past Tuesday — it represented the first time in 30 years that I did not cast a ballot. Like most native Chicagoans, politics is the only sport we love more than the Da Bears and Da Bulls. So, it was with no small amount of sadness that I did not vote and watched as the media allowed the ‘Tea Party message’ to be heralded and to continue to distort the airwaves. “Did President Obama understand the repudiation?” Hopefully, President Obama understands that same half of the country that was against reform really don’t know why they’re against it but know that it represents change and people hate change. But we need major changes. So, I can’t ride in a car to church today, because of the impact of the bumps in the road. But I will take a stroll through my neighborhood up to Abington Memorial Hospital later today. Just as I’ve become personally involved in my sons’ school and our parish’s school, I intend to become more involved in our local hospital. It’s a start.

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