All this intensive record searching sounds expensive. Shouldn't they maximize the benefit by limiting the search to those under, say, 50 years old?
Oh wait, we'll need "reform" to be able to make cost-saving searches like this...
Excellent point.
Of course sterilizing the instruments might have been more cost effective. It makes me wonder— they aren’t sterilizing the instruments, but they have a record of everyone on whom the instruments were used?
How reassuring is that?
>> Shouldn’t they maximize the benefit by limiting the search to those under, say, 50 years old?
I had to laugh at that one, though the truth of it makes me want to cry at the same time.
Hey, a little more info on the ages (since you brought it up):
“The patients will all receive neurological and psychological counseling as needed at the hospital’s expense. Senior Vice President of Medical Affairs, Dr. Carl Getto, would not speculate on how much such services would cost, or how long the services might be needed. The patients notified by the hospital range in age from 3- to 83-years-old.”
(From the ‘insists no negligence’ article, link at #10.)
Of course if the health care reform becomes law, they wouldn’t need to contact the 83 year old, because he/she would not have been eligible for the surgery to begin with... /sarc but true
All sarcasm aside, CJD is invariably fatal, usually within a year of diagnosis. What kind of surgery was performed on the patient? There was nothing that was going to save her from dying; docs don’t ordinarily operate on ‘inoperable’ cancers, so why were they operating on this woman?
Between this story and the one about the VA hospital in TN, it’s frightening the prospects of contracting diseases because of hospitals’ poor or non-existent sterilization procedures.