Rheka Basa is the finest reporter in America. She writes a bi-weekly opinion column for the Des Moines Register.
Morgan De Lac is an emmy-award winning photo journalist who is the editor of Patch, Barrington - the local online news magazine and photo journal.
I passed this along to both of them in full knowledge that should the story be pursued with strong resources, a pulitzer prize would definetly be a possible reward.
But even more rewarding would be an informed American public.
Greetings Rheka, Morgan
I pass along the tale of my recent emergency room treatment as examples both of what is right with and wrong with hospital care in the U.S.A.
Last Wednesday morning, with shortness of breath, exhaustion, hunger, cold, I asked the wonderful staff at Caribou Coffee in Libertyville to call 9-1-1 for me, which they not only did, but walked me to a chair, and got me a glass of ice water. The Emergency Tech staff came and did their thing - giving me oxygen, and putting me on an IV. The hospital intake and support staffs did their thing, finding (as always) that I had an upper respiratory infection and needed anti-biotics.
At this juncture, I need to point out that my upper respiratory thing had been festering for three weeks, but I am too febble minded to figure such things out. I should have seen my own physician after about 72 hours, and he would have prescribed anti-biotics and it would be a thing of the past. BUT ... this exemlifies one of the problems with health care in this country. My own physician treats me gratis, so I could have "afforded" to do so. But US residents not so lucky to have such a compassionate medical doctor friend would have not been able to have afforded to see the doctor, and would have followed the same course I did.
Of course, I was very lucky not to have developed walking pneumonia. So far, I have not, but no where is it written that I will always be so lucky.
After the emergency passed, and my oxygen intake was back to almost 100%, things in the hospital became much more lax. I found the staff's inability to answer my nurses requests, or meet their scheduled testing to be quite unprofessional. So much so, that I checked out, Against Medical Advice at 8:38 in the morning. Sadly, I was not able to retrieve my cigarettes, nor my beers.
But, NOW, here is the BAD BAD UGLY side of hospital care in the USA (certainly not all hospitals are as inept / corrupt as Condell, but, most assuredly, SOME are).
On Monday, I received in the mail, a bill for $15,000 for my THREE day stay at Condell.
THREE DAYS? Wait, one over night = 1
One morning after = 2
One sign out AMA the morning after still - 2.
THUS, they ripped ME off (except I have insurance now) and will rip off the insurer, unless SOMEBODY (it will be me) exercises due diligence and reports their ineptitude / corruption, to the appropriate governing bodies. And such an activity takes time, and follow through, and almost nobody has it or does it. Similar thing happened with my brother, who was billed for in-hospital services rendered on three consecutive days, each of which occurred subsequently to his death.
These are not isolate incidents, and the more the public knows, the more pressure can be brought to bear ON THE HOSPITALS to clean up their act, speaking of which, the Boston globe reported some time in the past year how local hospitals there were able to reduce their patient mortality by 75% merely by requiring that hospital personnel WASH THEIR HANDS! This, is the state of hospital care in the 21st century.
AND, this is most pathetic.
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