Relief - Did
the treatment work?
Effective medical
treatments depend upon hospitals providing services based on scientific
knowledge to all who could benefit and refraining from providing services to
those not likely to benefit.
Not all hospitals are
the same. Research has shown that in some hospitals, patients get better
medical care, experience fewer medical mistakes, and receive more attention for
their needs. Some hospitals also treat certain medical conditions better than
others. Here’s some questions to ponder:
Did you have to see another provider?
The hospital you
visited may not be the top hospitals in your area for the type of treatment you
needed. Consider the following:
1.
The hospital lacked
the specialist to treat a condition, or lacked the capacity or capability to
perform a procedure. As such, the treatment you received did not cure the
medical problem and you had to seek out another provider.
2.
Millions of people
have received prescribed medications that did not help their condition.
3.
Each year, patient
received operations that did not cure or make them better.
4.
Patients spend hour
receiving scans and tests that did nothing beneficial for them, and often
caused harm.
Ineffective medical
treatment is a hard pill to swallow, but it’s up to patients to take proactive
steps to avoid it.
Did you have to be readmitted to the hospital?
Your doctor does not
work alone but is assisted by many other professionals who have major roles in
the success of your treatment. Usually, when treatments do not work, patients
return to the hospital where the treatment was provided. This is known as being
readmitted.
1.
Hospital readmissions
are disruptive to patients and costly to their pocketbooks.
2.
Unintended return to
hospitals shortly after discharge has been increasingly perceived as a marker
of poor quality of care that patients received during the first hospital admission.
3.
Hospital readmissions
are frequent - 18% of Medicare patients have to go back to the hospital to
treat the same condition within 30 days.
4.
Each year, over 2.3
million patients are rehospitalized within 30 days after discharge.
5.
The yearly cost is $17
billion to taxpayers.
It is reported by the
Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) that about 75 % of such
readmissions are unnecessary and can be avoided.
Did you suffer a complication?
Complications are
avoidable patient safety events following surgeries, procedures, and
childbirth. Complications are sometimes called medical errors. Complications
may or may not be related to your doctor’s skill, and are related to other
factors that hospitals manage. There’s more:
1.
Complications usually
arise from treatments at a hospital that does not have a strong record of
treating patients with your condition in a safe and effective way.
2.
Hospitals that do
certain procedures frequently are usually better than those who do them less
often and have less complications. On the other hand, hospital that does not
have a lot of practice doing a certain procedure leads to complications.
3.
If left untreated,
complications can lead to serious infections, difficulty breathing, inability
to walk, bleeding, and even deaths.
4.
It is estimated that
preventable errors cost the United States $17-$29 billion per year in
healthcare expenses, lost worker productivity, and disability.
While sincere apologies
are a decent gesture, hospitals have to do more toward addressing medical
errors and protecting patients from harm.
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