Hospitals: Are They Carrying Out Their Duty Properly?

Submitted By: Khrystal Rodriguez

Do you trust hospitals or the doctors you see? People put their trust in doctors and their associates why? because they can easily diagnose or cure you of whatever ailment is plaguing you. Hospitals are supposed to be an environment of healing, security, and most of all hope to the patients and their loved ones. However, have you ever wondered if these doctors, hospitals, nurses, etc. are giving their best to the cause. Have you ever pondered are they working in my best interest? What if they are just trying to make their quotas? What if your case is not as important as someone else? What if the color of your skin determines if your worthy of their attention? Just what if they are so busy impartial care will have to do?

Race in Medical Care: Skin Color Matters with Patient Care

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Health/story?id=3401076&page=1#.TuZhYLIk67s
 

Medicare may penalize hospitals that readmit too many patients

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/medicare-may-penalize-hospitals-that-readmit-too-many-patients/2011/10/18/gIQAAMTopO_story.html

Illegal Immigrant in Life Support Battle

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/video/illegal-immigrant-life-support-battle-14620153

As I was researching topics to discuss for this blog I stumbled upon the article "Medicare May Penalize Hospitals That Re-admit Too Many Patients" and it was interesting to find out that medicare wants to charge hospitals for the returning trips of medicare patients. The reason which they stated "A 2009 study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that one in five Medicare patients discharged from the hospital had to be readmitted within 30 days; 34 percent were back within 90 days". Just like me hospitals and health policy experts want to know why so many patients are coming back? In the article they discussed a few different reasons such as the fact that patients are let out before they fully recover. In addition, the discharge process which they saw as a critical failure. A man by the name Brian Jack called it a "Perfect Storm" of errors. The article sheds light to the fact that many patients leave the hospital without a complete understanding of their condition, how to manage it, and the proper medications needed. Another man named Jesse Pines calls it "Poor coordination of care and poor transitions in a fragmented system". Lastly, they discussed a discharge summary and  how it can be difficult to read and understand. Furthermore, they said putting a discharge summary together is not always a doctor’s highest priority. The task often falls to nurses or medical residents who rarely have the time to make sure the patients understand the plan for follow-up care. I find that ridiculous. I understand that something simple as a discharge summary may not seem as important, however, its pretty obvious now that the lack of its proper development is a factor for the return of the patients. In my opinion if your a doctor its your duty to hold everything pertaining to a patients case a high priority and yes even a discharge summary. What does that say about the doctors who's hands we trust our life with?

I continued to search more and I found this article called "Race In Medical Care: Skin Color Matters With Patient Care". In this article and the title is pretty self explanatory discusses racial basis in medical care. They included a study which basically showed that most of the doctors were more likely to prescribe a potentially life-saving, clot-busting treatment for the white patients than for the African-American patient. Although the study was done through computer generated images they included that this study isn't the first to find that whites get better medical care than blacks. After the diagnosis they were given something called an implicit association test, which reveals a person's unconscious views of blacks and whites. So basically they said "the stronger a doctor's hidden anti-black feelings, the less likely he or she would be to give the black patient the clot-busting agent". Something interesting they included at the end was that there were black doctors who also showed bias against black patients, though less than white doctors. Some people say that racism is non-existent in this country, however, this article clearly shows its not. Its amazing that on the basis of a skin color a doctor will not give his all to that patient. That is very appalling and these are the people that we trust what a shame.

The last thing I saw was the video and basically it didn't take long for the hospital to gradually reduce its care for the coma patient mentioned and he was an illegal immigrant who basically lived here his whole life. Seeing the video made me wonder how long do doctors actually wait until they begin to reduce their attentive care. 

To conclude, these articles showed different types of negligence on the part of physicians, hospitals, nurse etc. I would want to know that if i'm severely ill those who I call my doctors are giving their best to make me better again. I am pretty sure not all hospitals and those who practice medicine act, behave, and think this way. For me this little research was very interesting and the saying "you learn something new every day" was very real.