Its WhiteCoat again, back with some additional medical news stories from around the web. There are some additional stories on my blog if you’re interested.
Another emergency department closes under financial pressures. Deaconess Hospital, near the University of Cincinnati, lost $13 million in 2008. Financial numbers for 2009 were not disclosed, but it reportedly had multiple staff layoffs last year. Deaconess stopped providing emergency services effective January 11, 2010 and is converting the emergency department to an urgent care center.
Hospitals in Canada are restructuring and turning their emergency departments into 24 hour urgent care centers. Now patients with emergencies must travel much further to obtain emergency care and are dying in transit. Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty stated that “the stark reality [is] that the government cannot afford the best health care in every single community.”
Government appointed “Local Health Integration Networks” decide how health care dollars are spent, but their government-appointed boards do not have the expertise or the tools to do their jobs.
The “fast care, free care, quality care – pick any two” paradigm may be changing.
What advice would economist Uwe Reinhardt give to President Obama about health care reform? “Talk to the people, not the academics.” Creating a health bill that doesn’t suck ass would probably help, too.
New Jersey is facing a shortage of 2,800 physicians in the next 10 years.
North Carolina is making cuts to Medicaid services, but is still more than $250 million over budget. So it plans more cuts to health care services. On the chopping block now … funding for about 3000 people who require personal care assistance providers to help them perform their activities of daily living (such as dressing, eating, going to the bathroom and getting out of a chair) — who are predicted to “completely lose those services.”
“We’re trying to … pay [only] for the services that are clinically appropriate,” said the state Health and Human Services Secretary. Currently, personal health care services cost the state about $750 per month. If those services were cut and a patient instead needed to be placed in a nursing home, it would cost the state $3000 per month.
Wise choice?
Then again, how many home-bound patients are likely to vote?
Well the paradigm has to change because bureaucrats aren’t engineers as much as they may pretend to be. That’s why you only get to pick one of three.
Special: Half the service for the same price.
Great post. I like how you cover several areas and do it concisely…Someone in Buffalo, NY needs to set up a huge ER right across the border that caters to Canadians! Ching, Ching! LOL Well done.
GREAT IDEA ! Storyteller Doc!!
That would be a very, very ,good idea!!
Even Though I am not a doc or a nurse, I could definatley qualify to be a receptionist at the front office! I can justsee me now on the phones and the intercom ! Dr. ERP” please report to the nurses’s station, STAT! LOL
Good Cdn link, but it only applies to Ontario, not all of Canada.