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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ish who wrote (14641)	1/2/1998 11:24:00 AM
From: Jack Clarke	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Bill: Your personal and intellectual integrity are commendable. No honest person in the Medical field has any gripe against recovery for damages owing to negligence. I don't know what percent of the health care dollar goes to malpractice suit coverage and prevention. I know I pay close to $50,000 per year for very minimum coverage, and the Neurosurgeons and Obstetricians pay about twice that much. The bigger hidden cost lies in unnecessary Xrays and tests. Come to any Emergency Room in my community with a headache and you will almost surely get an $800 CAT scan instead of the famous two aspirin. I don't know of any "unnecessary" surgery going on, and I must admit I have a hard time accepting that a surgeon could take a fellow human being and subject that person to surgery "for money". It is abhorrent to me to think of such a thing, so I don't know how or why this gets tagged as a cause of increased health care costs. Perhaps they are thinking of hysterectomies done for bleeding, where there may be no demonstrable disease in the tissue removed, but where the patient is relieved of her problem and happy, so in my view, that was not "unnecessary". BUT, unnecessary lab and X-Ray are another matter. This is called defensive medicine. Some push it to extremes. If there is a test, it will be done. It doesn't cost the patient anything. It doesn't cost the doctor anything. (Thanks to third party payment.) It relieves the patient of worry and the doctor of potential suit for not doing enough. "Nobody ever got sued for doing too many tests." But all docs can visualize themselves on that witness stand (if they haven't already been there) and being asked, "Doctor, isn't there an X-Ray which shows that condition? If Mrs. Jones had had such an X-Ray, wouldn't her tumor have been found at an earlier time? Etc." If that ER headache patient is the one in 10,000 with a brain tumor, that ER doc is going to put 9,999 patients through that $800 CAT scan to cover his own you know what. The cost of unncessary lab/X-ray is not measureable, because the physicians have learned how to "justify" on paper the need for the test. So if the clipboard crowd comes around to check the charts for "utilization review" as required by Medicare and Insurance, they will find justification for all the tests. Many of the nurses who used to be real nurses in ICUs, etc are now dressed in business suits and spending their days checking charts for that sort of thing. I don't blame 'em. Lot easier and less stressful than wallowing in blood and other bodily fluids taking care of the sick. I could go on. Jack