Breakfest meeting at our local gardening group

[NwMtGardener]

i was thinking that the rate of reimbursement for these hospitals should be on a scale based on their success rate of procedures they perform. if they do good at certain procedures they get a higher reimbursement. a poor success rate, i.e. patient dies, gets serious infection, or for some reason drs. have to go back in to fix something they missed, there is a lower reimbursement.
!'

Chickie, i can see your point here, something does need to be done about the reimbursements. However, if you base it on "success rate" people in poor health wont be able to find anyone to do a procedure on them. Let's face it, not everyone is in the same state of health when they go in for a procedure. Like Jared said, some people just dont take care of themselves. And it's rarely clearcut when there is an adverse outcome to a procedure. Was it the patients poor health to begin with? Did the scrub tech not use sterile procedure? Did the patient not follow aftercare instructions? Occassionally there is clearcut negligence that could be blamed on a doctor, but its much more rare than all the other things that could go wrong. Like, is it a doctor's fault that there are so many mutated infections from overuse of antibiotics these days?? Its a super complicated subject!!

 

[bobm]

Regarding the mutated bacteria and patients asking their doctors to write prescription for viral infections meant for bacteria ... just who is the doctor ?

 

[seedcorn]

Our system is broke. Everyone associated makes too much, products cost too much, and not enough people pay their bills. Want to lower costs? Train more health professionals, stop lawsuits, and make all law suits pass a common sense test. If you can't pay your bills, make them do volunteer work until bill is paid-at fair wage level.

 

[bobm]

We have Kaizer insurance. Fully 1 /3 or more of the doctors and nurses with heavy foreign accents with a few that we could hardly understand what they were saying are from Pakistan, India, Phillipines, Brazil, Chile, Mexico. Russia, etc. ( my wife and I had them as doctors over the years ). When I asked for the reason of so many foreign health care workers, I was told that there is a huge shortage of domestic ones. While our daughter ( straight A student) has already been qualified for and been trying to get into nursing school for over 5 years. She has done volunteer work at 2 hospitals, worked as a medical transcriber and medical auditor for an insurance company, as a nurse's assistant at a school district, and works at a rest home. All of her jobs there were just above minimum wage . I asked my friend who is an Equine Veterinarian why he charged so much for treatments / medications... he said he had to cover the high costs of malpractice insurance and to pay off over $200,000 in student loans plus another $250,000 in specialized truck, insurance, equipment, and medicines. As for lawyers, there is one at almost every corner in town. Just look at any phone books' Yellow Pages. Now, if every law suit had to pass the common sense test, most of the lawyer would have to go to work at Micky D's. Does anyone think that this would happen ? Why can our Institutions of Higher Education can train so many lawyers, but so few Doctors and Nurses ? At the Kaizer Hospitals as well as others, there are many retired people that do volunteer work .

 

[bj taylor]

i suspect we will see real dr shortages. articles indicate many who can will be leaving the practice as soon as they can rather than deal w/upcoming headaches. i don't see nursing being affected the same way - in fact, perhaps nursing will grow - especially nurse practitioners.

 

[bobm]

i suspect we will see real dr shortages. articles indicate many who can will be leaving the practice as soon as they can rather than deal w/upcoming headaches. i don't see nursing being affected the same way - in fact, perhaps nursing will grow - especially nurse practitioners.

Here in Washington, during this past year we are seeing more and more clinics and hospitals recruiting retired nurses to work part time ( 2-3 days per week or month ) as Nurse Practitioners.

 

[curly_kate]

Our system is broke. Everyone associated makes too much, products cost too much, and not enough people pay their bills.

agree 10,000,000%

I've discovered it's cheaper for me to pay the "cash rate" for my chiropractor than go through insurance. When I see the EOBs from my insurance company, I notice there is one rate they bill, and one rate the insurance company actually pays. I know from working in medical billing, that if you call and say you don't have the money to pay a bill, the hospital just writes off a portion of your bill. So why even say that a certain procedure even costs that much in the first place?? The healthcare system (along with our government in general) reminds me of an old roof that's been repaired a zillion times instead of just ripping the old one off and starting over with better materials.

 

[bobm]

Last evening I talked with 2 other neighbors on the cul-de-sac. one said that he had his medical insurance through his wife's work. His employer paid him $200 / month extra toward that insurance. On Oct 1st he got a letter in the mail stating that he will not be receiving that extra money in his pay check. Another neighbor said that his medical insurance was changed to another Ins. Co. policy. His monthly payment will go up by $20 and his co-pay will go from $20 to $50 per office visit AND there will be a deductible of $1,300 for each ocurance. Unaffordable plan you say ...