I recently spent several days at a satellite conference — basically the real conference was in Florida but my boss sent me to a nearby Marriott to watch speakers make presentations via satellite as I sat in those horrible, uncomfortable hotel chairs and had to endure snow storms to show up on time. Anyway, the conference was for the most part about healthcare and making your healthcare organization a success through better green living, patient safety, more efficient workflow for staff, and reducing risk.
As an IT person, I wasn’t looking forward to going, but since it was mandated by my boss, I went. To my surprise I got quite a lot out of the experience. In the end, I felt I had come away with some very intriguing concepts that can be applied to Healthcare IT as well as nursing and the medical staff. I feel very energized by the experience though I’m a little wary that despite all of the good ideas, I feel very few will be implemented here.
But the presentation that impressed me the most was the one at the end of the first day. It was slightly political and slightly politically incorrect. The woman doing it is a poet and I guess a performance artist. Her parents are both doctors and she has a passion regarding healthcare. She apparently was contracted by Kellogg to put together this one person show where she plays all of these different roles of people speaking before a congressional hearing on healthcare; she even portrays opposing roles. The whole thing was brilliant. She did did accents and costume changes and mannerisms. You could believe she was the little old Korean pharmacist or the Jewish widow or the Somalian Girl Scout or the Lesbian Indian Doctor or the New York Italian nurse or the Iraq War Vet.
The message I took away from her entertaining but educational performance is that all healthcare should be equal. I’m not talking about national healthcare; I’m saying that no matter who you are, no matter what your ethnicity, gender, religion, lifestyle choice, age, or socio-economical situation your healthcare should be the same as everyone else’s. I’m saying that no one should receive better treatment than anyone else, no one should be denied life-saving services simply because they are poor or are from another country. Being wealthy or English-speaking or from the right family doesn’t make you any more worthy of life or of good medical service. Just because someone is a Muslim doesn’t give a nurse the right to be rude or disrespectful, whatever that nurse thinks about the 9/11 hijackers. Just because someone’s English isn’t so good, doesn’t mean they don’t need as much care as anyone else.
There are plenty of stories of bias and neglect based on ethnicity, gender, religion, lifestyle choice, age, and socio-economical situations. Hospitals send patients home without proper diagnoses or treatment because they couldn’t understand their accents or languages and those patients end up worse off or even dead. Studies have shown that black women do not receive the same medical advice that white women do concerning breast cancer. Pharmacists are denying people medications they need because it supposedly goes against the pharmacists religious beliefs — but how come you never hear of anyone outraged because they’ve been denied viagra? Patients are denied care and treatment all of the time by insurance companies and healthcare institutions because of cost — heck, my insurance company will only pay for half of one of my prescriptions and stopped paying for my migraine treatment all together. But some make major life-saving decisions like denying chemotherapy or surgery. And some hospitals will send patients away if they don’t have insurance.
I don’t think it’s a lot to ask for equal healthcare. Healthcare professionals are supposed to want to help people, save people. That’s what they’re there for. I’d like to believe that the woman with all of her belongs in the grocery basket on the corner talking to herself would get the same quality care as Barbara Bush if they both arrived at the emergency room at the same time for the same ailment, but somehow I doubt that Barbara would have to wait the excruciating six or more hours it takes to get past the waiting room these days.
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Equal health care for all is a good thought in theory but the money does have to come from somewhere and the people requiring the health care do need to do something in exchange to receive the care. Donations from humanitarians for life saving surgeries is one idea, perhaps those who are in need of health care but cannot afford it can start a campaign to receive donations from those who would be willing to pay. When it comes to simple medications, however, many people are taking medications that they don’t really need to begin with and the side effects usually outweigh the benefits of the medication. I am all for life saving surgery for those who need it, cancer and AIDS treatment being at the top of the list but I need to see a way for the people who can’t afford it to contribute in one way or another to earn the health care they need. There is money out there for them from those who are willing to help and those people simply need to be reached out to.
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Health care for everyone sounds great, but Sandra’s right- the money has to come from somewhere.
I think it would work for people who do not qualify for coverage (like former cancer patients) to be able to buy into affordable insurance that is done by the government. The overhead for government-run health insurance is really low- like 3%. Anyway, I think there is surely some way for people to be able to afford the care they need.
Surely there is, right?
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