Word: patients
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...program. Dr. William G. Anlyan, vice president for health affairs at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., gives this example: "Today, the patient with a heart problem sees his family practitioner who refers him to a nearby cardiologist, who then refers the patient to a tertiary center like Duke. He's evaluated by a clinical cardiologist, then goes to a group of diagnostic laboratory cardiologists and radiologists. If the patient is to be operated on, the surgeons, the anesthesiologist, the pump team, the blood bank in the institution that feeds the pump are involved. The patient goes...
...April confessed that, as a member of the governing board of Georgia's Americus and Sumter County Hospital in the 1960s he had particpated in bilking his neighbors. Said the President: "We were naturally inclined to buy a new machine whenever it became available. Then we required every patient who came to the hospital to submit their body to the machine, whether they needed it or not, to rapidly defray the purchase. I did not realize then that I was ripping off people." One reason for the emphasis on machinery: the prestige of a hospital is judged by the quality...
Doctors, too, tend to order every test that a patient could conceivably need. In part, that is done to reassure patients or to protect themselves against malpractice suits. Says Dr. E. Kash Rose, senior radiologist at Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa, Calif.: "One study showed that 80% of skull X rays were unnecessary for care and treatment of patients. Rib X rays are done purely for the mental relief of the patient rather than for medical reasons. The treatment is exactly the same" whether the X ray discloses a fracture...
...price is not justified? Asks Dr. David Thompson of New York Hospital-Cornell: "If you decide to do without some product of the new technology, which one would it be? And are you willing to take the chance that it won't be available when you, the patient, need...
...first essential is to reform insurance practices. Some beginnings have been made: Blue Cross-Blue Shield will no longer automatically pay for a battery of tests administered to every patient who enters a hospital unless each test is specifically ordered by the attending physician. Insurance policies should be rewritten to pay for lab tests and other care administered in a doctor's office rather than a hospital. If Congress will not push the Blue plans and private insurers in this direction, corporations could and should. Exxon, General Motors and AT&T have the bargaining power that individual patients lack...