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23 Jan |
No matter what anybody says General Health, Health Care, My MCL
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I still believe Kaiser Permanente has the best doctors, and offers the best health care coverage of any health care organization.
How many other emergency room doctors, do you think, would bother to call a patient at home in the evening, after receiving notification of an elevated white blood cell count, to make sure that person was feeling ok?
Well at Kaiser they do, and this wasn’t the first time.
This was at least the third time, I’ve received a call from an ER doctor checking up on me. It seems every time I have my blood checked late in the day (which occurred yesterday), after all the doctors in the office are long gone, I get a call checking up on me.
While that may seem like a little thing to some, and I wouldn’t have thought any less of Kaiser or the ER doctor, had the doctor not called, it is comforting to know someone actually cares about their job and their patients. You don’t find that too often any more in todays hectic, “it’s all about me” world.
Anywaze, I was happy to find out my lymphocyte count had dropped below 100 thou/cumm to 99 thou/cumm, after jumping to 106 thou/cumm last month. I still don’t consider that very significant, since at these levels variations in results can be extreme.
The good news is I’m still feeling fine. I do have a few issues, but nothing I am too concerned about just yet, and probably no more then most other people.
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23 Dec |
US health care at its finest Health Care
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In keeping with my complete disdain for the US health care system, I thought I would bring you this very recent story about the death off a teenage leukemia patient.
It’s so easy to surmise from this story, that the sick and infirmed have no place in the US. For if that weren’t the case, then what other possible reason could there be for US citizens continuing to support, and even praise, a system that not only condones the actions of insurance companies, in denying health care to individuals, but actually rewards them for doing just that.
This the most recent example (one of many) involves Cigna Health Care, but it certainly shouldn’t be construed as unique to this company. It is the mission of all health insurers to deny and delay care as long as possible in order to increase profits.
Eventually Cigna did relent, but it took significant protests by 150 people outside the offices of Cigna, and an internet campaign orchestrated by the DailyKos website and other blogs.
In the middle of the rally, a note was handed to Mrs Sarkisyan [the mother] saying that Cigna had decided to reverse its decision.
“Cigna HealthCare has decided to make an exception in this rare and unusual case and we will provide coverage should she proceed with the requested liver transplant,” it said in a statement.
Unfortunately it didn’t come in time to save the patient.
And the case was not rare or unusual, nor experimental or unproven, as Cigna claimed,
Sarkisyan’s doctors at UCLA medical centre, including the head of its transplant unit, [wrote] a letter to protest that the treatment which they proposed was neither experimental nor unproven.
Cigna just didn’t want to pay for the procedure, because it would effect profits.
But as I indicated before, the patient died, before any money was paid, which ultimately was the intent of the policy. Delay approving care as long as possible, and hope the patient dies. And in this case, it worked to perfection.
That’s good for Cigna profits, and shareholders, it’s just not that good for the patient.
So think you have great insurance, and this can’t happen to you?
If you remain healthy, and never go to the doctor except for routine physical examinations, you’re probably right. But should you get sick, well…… Just how else do you think those insurance companies will be able to maintain those record breaking profits?
[CIGNA] recently posted figures for its third-quarter performance this year, which showed profits up 22%. Next year it expects to earn an income of up to $1.2bn.
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9 Jan |
Just one more reason to stay healthy, eat well, exercise, and wash your hands Day to Day Life, Health Care
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Being a slow health care newsday (referring to my other blog), and not having posted anything to this blog lately, I started getting a little fidgety. So I went blog hopping, and came across this article by a 3rd year med student on the west coast. It may be a little late for me and some others, but his thoughts on why you don’t want to be hospitalized just seemed worth sharing.
Hospitals: Worse Before You’re Better
“Above all, do no harm,” is pretty much bullshit. Let me warn you.
You do not want to be a patient in a hospital. One, it means you’re sick enough to need to be in a hospital, which is pretty sick. Two, we’ll make you feel much worse until you feel much better. If you do get admitted, please just expect the following to happen. If you’re in a teaching hospital, with attendings and residents and medical students, more of this may happen. Be prepared in advance, so that you don’t get all crabby when I try to be happy-nice medical student and ask you some questions. (I realize you probably don’t mean to take it out on me, and that I’m always trying to put on my nice-happy face so that you won’t want to take it out on me, but you’re probably tired and frustrated and you’d take it out on Mother Teresa (may she rest in peace) if she were in my place, too.)
- You will be poked and prodded, have your blood drawn multiple times per day, from multiple arms and wrists.
- You will tell your story to at least three people not uncommonly 8 or more, and you will get annoyed, because we will ask you the exact same questions over and over again.
- You will not get any sleep; people will constantly be bothering you with questions, physical exams, or lab draws.
- You will be told lots of things, by lots of people, often things that use medical mumbo-jumbo. It will be confusing, probably which test you’re getting, or what medicine you’re on. Many times people suck at explaining this stuff in normal terms, so please, please ask.
- You may wet the bed, or defecate in your bed, and it may not be immediate that you get cleaned up.
- You may be in a room with a noisy neighbor, or worse, a demented one that sits in a chair all day with her legs wide open and up in the air, making high-pitched shrieking noises all day.
- You will probably smell, and when you do get washed up or get a sponge bath, it won’t be that fulfilling.
- If you’re infected or contagious, people won’t want to touch you without gloves, and won’t enter a room with you without a mask. Necessary, but I’m sure isolating.
- If someone decides you’re an interesting case, or you have something about your body that is different or rare or special, you may be made to feel like an object as a doctor teaches using you as an example.
- Even if you’re not an interesting case, people may talk about your care with other team members like you’re not even there in the room, and many times, they will talk in medical code.
I’m not condoning this behavior or this system, but I’m saying often, it’s how it works. Many of the causes are medical, part of diagnosis or treatment, but others are political, legal, structural, academic, technologic and institutional in nature. We have a nursing shortage; we must teach future physicians; the law requires this; unions require that; paperwork must be done accordingly; technology is from the 1980s; there are limited resources available for health care. And on and on and on. If I could design the hospital system over again I would, and maybe I will when I’m older, but in 2006, this unfortunately may be your hospital experience.Just more reason to stay healthy, eat well, exercise, and wash your hands, right?