Posted on 04/20/2016 5:03:01 PM PDT by Kaslin
I write this from the hospital. Seems I have lung cancer.
My doctors tell me my growth was caught early and I'll be fine. Soon I will barely notice that a fifth of my lung is gone. I believe them. After all, I'm at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. U.S. News & World Report ranked it No. 1 in New York. I get excellent medical care here.
But as a consumer reporter, I have to say, the hospital's customer service stinks. Doctors keep me waiting for hours, and no one bothers to call or email to say, "I'm running late." Few doctors give out their email address. Patients can't communicate using modern technology.
I get X-rays, EKG tests, echocardiograms, blood tests. Are all needed? I doubt it. But no one discusses that with me or mentions the cost. Why would they? The patient rarely pays directly. Government or insurance companies pay.
I fill out long medical history forms by hand and, in the next office, do it again. Same wording: name, address, insurance, etc.
I shouldn't be surprised that hospitals are lousy at customer service. The Detroit Medical Center once bragged that it was one of America's first hospitals to track medication with barcodes. Good! But wait -- ordinary supermarkets did that decades before.
Customer service is sclerotic because hospitals are largely socialist bureaucracies. Instead of answering to consumers, which forces businesses to be nimble, hospitals report to government, lawyers and insurance companies.
Whenever there's a mistake, politicians impose new rules: the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act paperwork, patient rights regulations, new layers of bureaucracy...
Nurses must follow state regulations that stipulate things like, "Notwithstanding subparagraph (i) of paragraph (a) of this subdivision, a nurse practitioner, certified under section sixty-nine hundred ten of this article and practicing for more than three thousand six hundred hours may comply with this paragraph in lieu of complying with the requirements of paragraph (a)..."
Try running a business with rules like that.
Adding to that is a fear of lawsuits. Nervous hospital lawyers pretend mistakes can be prevented with paper and procedure. Stressed hospital workers ignore common sense and follow rigid rules.
In the intensive care unit, night after night, machines beep, but often no one responds. Nurses say things like "old machines," "bad batteries," "we know it's not an emergency." Bureaucrats don't care if you sleep. No one sues because he can't sleep.
Some of my nurses were great -- concerned about my comfort and stress -- but other hospital workers were indifferent. When the customer doesn't pay, customer service rarely matters.
The hospital does have "patient representatives" who tell me about "patient rights." But it feels unnatural, like grafting wings onto a pig.
I'm as happy as the next guy to have government or my insurance company pay, but the result is that there's practically no free market. Markets work when buyer and seller deal directly with each other. That doesn't happen in hospitals.
You may ask, "How could it? Patients don't know which treatments are needed or which seller is best. Medicine is too complex for consumers to negotiate."
But cars, computers and airplane flights are complex, too, and the market still incentivizes sellers to discount and compete on service. It happens in medicine, too, when you get plastic surgery or Lasik surgery. Those doctors give patients their personal email addresses and cellphone numbers. They compete to please patients.
What's different about those specialties? The patient pays the bill.
Leftists say the solution to such problems is government health care. But did they not notice what happened at Veterans Affairs? Bureaucrats let veterans die, waiting for care. When the scandal was exposed, they didn't stop. USA Today reports that the abuse continues. Sometimes the VA's suicide hotline goes to voicemail.
Patients will have a better experience only when more of us spend our own money for care. That's what makes markets work.
Odd that you thought of that immediately.
If he is a smoker it’s all his fault,eh?
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Wikipedia says no.
Try VA Palo Alto — I’m blessed to live where I do. The care there is incredibly good.
I have heard of people getting LC who never smoked. There has to be some other reason for it.
...
Non-smokers have about a 3% chance of getting it. Smokers have about a 6% chance.
The last time I was in Dallas I was placed in a closet. No, I’m not kidding.
Stossel is spot on with what it’s like to be in most hospitals. FYI, US News ranks are based on the measurable outcomes of procedures, not customer service.
The hospital I use does customer surveys, and I think it’s starting to work. A procedure I had a few weeks ago was as good an experience as it could be.
My mother was a smoker for 40 years, quit in 1984, diagnosed with lung cancer in 2010, died a painful death from complications in 2012. Not blamimg Stossel. It’s personal for me. I don’t wish cancer on my worst enemy.
I live in one of those hated major cities with teaching hospitals that have saved my life twice. I don’t bitch about details. Some highly skilled 38 year old doc stents up a 90% blocked left descending artery and it can’t even be detected on an echo cardiogram a year later. My first thought is to give a crap about being emailed? Have some freaking gratitude.
Try a V.A. hospital sometime.
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I think some are better than others. Like regular hospitals, the ones associated with top university programs tend to be better. I don’t know if any are associated with religious institutions, though. Some of those are excellent hospitals, too.
My experience with VA healthcare is limited to Palo Alto - everything has been consistently excellent for the past five+ years. As I say, I’m blessed to live here.
“Great Article. Stossel needs to go to Mayo Clinic in Rochester,Mn for amazing patient care. Astounding system. One of the best in the world.”
Or Stanford University Hospital in Palo Alco, CA. My wife had open-heart surgery there (at 72) to replace a calcified Aortic Valve. It is a six-hour operation that involves stopping the heart to make the needed repair. I had no idea that any hospital anywhere ran at the level of Stanford (which is #1 in California). Health care in California is generally way above average, but the bar would have to be set extemely high at any other hospital to equal the care she received there!
Glad they caught it early.
God speed...
Nearly missed this one. Best to you and I hope for a speedy recovery.
“Try VA Palo Alto — I’m blessed to live where I do. The care there is incredibly good.”
That’s because it’s a stones throw from Sanford Hospital. My father was treated for bone cancer at the PAVA, and all his doctors were from Stanford. That said, ti was 40 years ago and he did not survive, but the doctors were heroic, and they had some who were also from UCSF. If all VA hospitals were like the one in PA, we would not be having the discussion about them today.
Exactly - I’m dealing with a bit of lung cancer myself right now. I had a lobectomy in February and am currently getting radiation at Stanford for the other side. The overlap between Stanford and VA Palo Alto is incredible.
The largest cohort of lung cancer is Chinese women who have been cooking all their lives with smoky fires an using heated oils.
“I’m dealing with a bit of lung cancer myself right now.”
I’ll keep a good thought for you!
Thanks, I appreciate that. I never did put up a prayer request thread.
Whoops. My mistake. I am glad you are cancer free.
About 10% of lung cancer victims never smoked.
Another 10% of lung cancer victims quit smoking before age 40, or, they quit after age 40, but were smoke free for at least 20 years.
Statistically, the two groups of ex-smokers I mentioned above have roughly the same risk for lung cancer as people who never smoked at all.
But, today, we don’t really have enough knowledge to tell if smoking caused their cancer, or if something else caused it.
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