Posted on 10/27/2014 1:03:49 PM PDT by winoneforthegipper
I think the “VERY good reason” is called “National Security”.
I am doing no such thing and I resent that accusation! If you read what I wrote you'll see that I explicitly said that I was not saying anything wrong was being done. What I said was that, based on the risks of transporting patients to another hospital, it would would have to be in the patient's best interest. I never said or implied that it was not in their best interest to move them. I did say that there must be more to the story, i.e., something that would make it in the patient's best interest to take that risk, at least in their judgment. I assumed only the highest professional integrity and judgment on their part, and explicitly made the point that this did not imply anything evil, which is why I think there's more to the story. You misunderstood what I was saying.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
I’m trying to remember if there are interior connections between University & Bellevue. Bellevue may have a cross street on one side but there may be an overhead passage. University is on a very long street without any cross streets interfering with it.
scouter, I won’t back down. Administrators are easily culpable of malpractice. Let’s talk about the administrators in the CDC.
Let’s talk about the administrators at Texas Health.
Let’s talk about the medical malpractice that goes on in this country daily due to god complex doctors not listening to their patients.
Please, don’t think you can make me back down based on that kind of language.
Ebola cases should never enter our regular healthcare systems. They should be going to the specialized centers. Moving these ICU patients, out of an abundance of care, proves again that our system is not set up to handle this - recalling the CDC director a few weeks ago - and we are endangering ourselves in these situations.
This doctor, in particular, should have been transferred to one of the places better prepared to handle his case. Bellevue is not as prepared as they trumpeted just last week.
ican'tbelievit, I'm not sure what you're getting at. In Post #37 steve86 accused both you and me of accusing the doctors and administrators of professional malpractice. I'm simply defending myself because I did no such thing, and I don't believe you did, either. My comment was directed at him, not you.
I'm not backing down, either. I have no evidence to support an accusation of professional malpractice, and I made no such accusation. I simply said that there's more to the story, and provided justification for that belief. Whether the moves from Bellevue to NYU are justified or not, there is something more to the story that we're not being told.
I just confirmed with a colleague who recently worked on NYU's electronic medical record system, and who maintains contact with his former colleagues at NYU, that NYU and Bellevue do NOT share electronic medical records. Thus, the interruption in the continuity of care is definitely an additional risk in transferring patients from Bellevue to NYU.
Again, whether or not that risk is justified is a separate question. My point is only that the decision makers know something they're not sharing with us if they've made the decision to move all those patients from Bellevue's ICU to NYU's. Moving a critically ill patient from one institution to another can only be justified if it is in the patient's best interest. Such a move cannot be justified--ethically, medically, financially, or legally--simply by a hypothetical future caseload that may never materialize. You have to take the best care of the patient in front of you, rather than a patient who may not ever show up.
There are a host of reasons why such a move may be justified, and we've discussed some of them. But a hypothetical future caseload that may never materialize is not one of them. So there must be another reason we don't know about.
I would go so far as to call bringing in the patient with ebola professional malpractice. Now, who is ultimately to blame for the malpractice is yet to be determined, but I would go all of the way to the CDC director and White House.
When the hospital posted pics of staff gowned for a possible ebola patient, people on here immediately point out they were not suitably gowned.
Now, they have accepted in a patient, and as a result have to move critically ill patients to another hospital. And the most likely reason. They really were not capable of caring or a patient with ebola without risking the rest of the hospital patients.
They have found themselves in a situation where they have no choice but to start moving these patients. So, yes, there is malpractice going on at administrator levels.
Good points. But I would not necessarily place the blame on the administrators at the hospital. Like all hospitals, Bellevue relied on the guidance of the CDC. So if there is malpractice, I suspect it is more at the CDC (and White House) than at Bellevue.
In a previous job I visited Fort Gordon, GA as part of a "swords to plowshares" effort to translate the military medical corps' knowledge of taking care of traumatically injured soldiers to the civilian sector. That was about 25 years ago. I was amazed at the their ability to construct a fully functional trauma center for several dozen patients in a matter of 24 hours. It had triage, labs, operating rooms, ICUs, ventilators, infusion pumps, xray machines, sleeping quarters for the staff, electronic medical records... everything you'd see in a full-fledged Level 1 Trauma Center.
I also visited the USS Comfort, a hospital ship run by the Navy. Same thing... a true floating hospital.
I wonder why, if NYC is expecting so many Ebola patients, they could not simply erect one of those hospitals, keeping the Ebola population out of the regular health care system.
I'm just sayin'...
That is what I don’t understand about Africa. Why aren’t they setting up treatment systems outside of town? Read the Firestone story. Shipping containers, plastic, good to go.
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