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Navigating Healthcare Today
So one of my best friends recently had a hip replacement. A few weeks later, he developed severe pain in the hip along with redness, tenderness, and drainage from the wound incision. He thought he had a wound infection and called his surgeon’s office to see what he should do. The receptionist he spoke to told him the next available appointment was six days later. So he took it! He didn’t tell the phone operator that he needed the doctor or his assistant to call him back as soon as possible. It is hard to believe, but many people are afraid to argue with the peons paid to block access to medical care.
So he fell the night before his appointment and couldn’t get up. He crawled to his cell phone and waited while the EMTs called a locksmith to drill his door and take him to the hospital next to the doctor’s office. He had a severe joint infection and, as I write, is in surgery for removal of the hip prosthesis and replacement of a new joint.
I offered to be involved in his care, but he resisted. Fortunately, another friend, who is a retired police detective, has had more acceptance from him and has been great at getting to the bottom of the situation. She is truly great at interrogation and has a bull—- meter second to none. Unfortunately, that is what is needed sometimes to get good care.
Published in General
Even in the US, I would expect the surgeons etc to at least have the foll0w-up scheduled/in-place, even if the patient’s insurance might not cover it.
This sounds ripe for a huge lawsuit.
As a matter of fact my household was involved in more than one surgery last year and we actually received follow-up calls from the surgeon’s office within a few days of surgery to make sure that all was well. Even my dentist office called me last week two days after an extraction.
Maybe I’ve just been lucky so far, not to have been neglected.
Not just follow-up calls, about healing and what-not, but follow-up treatments that the surgeon knows will be required, and required within a certain time-frame.
Especially in the Chicago area
Aren’t there some Chicago ERs that aren’t in gang territory?
Troy’s latest from Kite and Key. I think it is pretty good. Seems to fit this conversation.
https://youtu.be/N_9Ab3SYrDE?list=TLGG1ZnfeWmQCEowNDA2MjAyMw
Interesting video. It gets at the complexities and interrelatedness of all of the parts of healthcare financing and regulation.
That was the biggest part of the ObamaCare problem. As many people warned at the time that the two Affordable Care Act 1,500-page bills were passed, it inserted itself into every nook and cranny of the healthcare establishment, just the way a computer virus works on our computers. We can never extract it because it is attached to everything.
What a terrible mess.
Its dysfunction lends a great deal of support to the paranoid-sounding notion that it was designed to drive everyone nuts so they would accept, indeed, plead for, a universal single-payer healthcare system.
But of course, actual single-payer would not be a REDUCTION in those regulations.
I had a hip done just in January and I can understand in the morass of pains you have from being cut open and having a bone chopped off etc., that sometimes the average Joe doesn’t want to make a big deal about having a pain, so you take the appointment 6 days later in trust of the doctors office which ultimately leads to this crisis. But sometimes it isn’t any ones fault it’s just a confluence of misunderstandings and not realizing the seriousness of the situation. I’m willing to wager even in the “perfection of Scandinavian health care” they’ve got their imperfections.
I understand being upset, but sometimes [REDACTED] happens.
That is a very good overview of the inherent problems involved in providing healthcare to populations but I wrote this post to point out that where the rubber meets the road with individual patients and families is where every system has to rely on conscientious providers of healthcare and wise consumers to know how best to respond. It is a huge problem, maybe even Yuge! as a former president might say. Try to find healthcare advocates for you and your family members with at least a small amount of medical knowledge but interrogation skills worthy of a wise police detective.
Let me restate a point I briefly referenced. Mrs. Pessimist and I agree that we should both attend any medical appointment for either of us that is likely to be significant. We don’t attend the other’s routine annual physical because neither of us have complicated medical issues and there are some things that are best left somewhat private. However, if either of us were to need surgery or complicated medical tests, it is imperative that we both become involved. There are many, many people that you may know who have no one to go with them to a medical visit or procedure. If someone tells you about an upcoming medical procedure or appointment, ask them if they need someone to be with them.