Insurance Co/Corporate /bureaucratic thieves. Posted by a trauma center physician:
XXXXX
Friday, 12/27/19 11:20:48 PM
A few years ago I had a patient brought into my Level I Trauma Center by EMS, shot 19 times in the pelvis. The patient was alive but was going to die quickly if we didn’t act immediately. I called out to the Unit Secretary to get us 2 units of uncrossed blood immediately. Before the Electronic Medical Record we’d shout out an order in the thick of such traumas and what ever we needed showed up almost immediately. But as we worked to place IV lines, check the pelvis with a bedside ultrasound, and pour in fluids as the OR got ready I waited and waited for the blood to arrive. It previously would have taken literally 1 minute. It was now 10 minutes, critical time in a life and death gunshot victim. I asked the secretary what was going on and she told me they needed the proper order in the computer or they couldn’t release the blood. I immediately ran the 100 or so yards down the hall to the blood bank and confronted the tech, who was standing there with the cooler of packed red blood cells. I yelled to him to give me the blood. He responded that he couldn’t release it until the right order was put in or he might lose his job. I told him to put the cooler on the floor and I would take it, otherwise I was going to take it from him violently if necessary. He was horrified to even be in this situation but it was surreal; I had a dying patient that needed this blood NOW, and he was afraid of losing his job because some manager beat it into his head that he’d be in big trouble if he didn’t follow their rules (so they could track the money of course).
This is just the tip of the iceberg about how medicine has become so corporate that a person’s life could be lost due to stupid bureaucracy brought about in the name of “efficiency” but is really about how to maximize profit at the expense of real time person to person interactions that are essential to the practice of medicine. It’s worse than anyone outside of being a Physician, Nurse, Medical Technician, or any other provider of care could possibly imagine. I spend more time at my computer, and I have a scribe who does my notes, ordering labs, imaging, and medications, than I do with my patients. I have to push myself to get up and go re-check them and interact. It actually takes discipline to do this, something so absurd I couldn’t have ever imagined it when I was in training.
XXXXX
A few years ago I had a patient brought into my Level I Trauma Center by EMS, shot 19 times in the pelvis. The patient was alive but was going to die quickly if we didn’t act immediately. I called out to the Unit Secretary to get us 2 units of uncrossed blood immediately. Before the Electronic Medical Record we’d shout out an order in the thick of such traumas and what ever we needed showed up almost immediately. But as we worked to place IV lines, check the pelvis with a bedside ultrasound, and pour in fluids as the OR got ready I waited and waited for the blood to arrive. It previously would have taken literally 1 minute. It was now 10 minutes, critical time in a life and death gunshot victim. I asked the secretary what was going on and she told me they needed the proper order in the computer or they couldn’t release the blood. I immediately ran the 100 or so yards down the hall to the blood bank and confronted the tech, who was standing there with the cooler of packed red blood cells. I yelled to him to give me the blood. He responded that he couldn’t release it until the right order was put in or he might lose his job. I told him to put the cooler on the floor and I would take it, otherwise I was going to take it from him violently if necessary. He was horrified to even be in this situation but it was surreal; I had a dying patient that needed this blood NOW, and he was afraid of losing his job because some manager beat it into his head that he’d be in big trouble if he didn’t follow their rules (so they could track the money of course).
This is just the tip of the iceberg about how medicine has become so corporate that a person’s life could be lost due to stupid bureaucracy brought about in the name of “efficiency” but is really about how to maximize profit at the expense of real time person to person interactions that are essential to the practice of medicine. It’s worse than anyone outside of being a Physician, Nurse, Medical Technician, or any other provider of care could possibly imagine. I spend more time at my computer, and I have a scribe who does my notes, ordering labs, imaging, and medications, than I do with my patients. I have to push myself to get up and go re-check them and interact. It actually takes discipline to do this, something so absurd I couldn’t have ever imagined it when I was in training.