I get it. But... every time my dad's been hospitalized for trauma (a lot!), mom's had to go with him, sleep in his room, and basically act as as his bodyguard, because every dang time, doc looks at his chart, sees his medication history, calls the neurologist, and tries to put him back on seizure meds that he hasn't taken in decades (he no longer has seizures). Those meds are dangerous, highly addictive, he doesn't need them, and the side effects are so awful he'd rather die than take them again. And the docs DO NOT LISTEN and do not respect his wishes. Over the years, we've had to drag in our pastor, a TV station friend, and a lawyer, to keep the med-pushers at bay.
So, yeah, he needed major surgery and the hospital was the only place to get it-- but we had to defend him from unnecessary interventions the whole time, and then spend months fighting the resulting billing fraud (where they bill us anyway for treatments he refused, doctors he didn't see, private rooms he didn't get-- it feels vengeful rather than merely incompetent).
Hospitals need to lose their monopoly power. They use the "we're the only people who can do an emergency appendectomy or save you after a car accident" thing to justify so much of the evil they do. It's a hostage situation at this point. They need to be stripped down to where trauma is the *only* thing they do, because everything else is covered by small inpatient facilities all over the place. Maternity hospitals are still a thing in other parts of the world. They're safer than regular hospitals, and more pleasant. No reason we couldn't have a small, friendly, 10-bed hospital in every neighborhood, that could deal with your appendix, your gallbladder, your pancreatitis, that electrolyte imbalance...
Trauma has always been mainstream medicine's highest competency.
I get it. But... every time my dad's been hospitalized for trauma (a lot!), mom's had to go with him, sleep in his room, and basically act as as his bodyguard, because every dang time, doc looks at his chart, sees his medication history, calls the neurologist, and tries to put him back on seizure meds that he hasn't taken in decades (he no longer has seizures). Those meds are dangerous, highly addictive, he doesn't need them, and the side effects are so awful he'd rather die than take them again. And the docs DO NOT LISTEN and do not respect his wishes. Over the years, we've had to drag in our pastor, a TV station friend, and a lawyer, to keep the med-pushers at bay.
So, yeah, he needed major surgery and the hospital was the only place to get it-- but we had to defend him from unnecessary interventions the whole time, and then spend months fighting the resulting billing fraud (where they bill us anyway for treatments he refused, doctors he didn't see, private rooms he didn't get-- it feels vengeful rather than merely incompetent).
Hospitals need to lose their monopoly power. They use the "we're the only people who can do an emergency appendectomy or save you after a car accident" thing to justify so much of the evil they do. It's a hostage situation at this point. They need to be stripped down to where trauma is the *only* thing they do, because everything else is covered by small inpatient facilities all over the place. Maternity hospitals are still a thing in other parts of the world. They're safer than regular hospitals, and more pleasant. No reason we couldn't have a small, friendly, 10-bed hospital in every neighborhood, that could deal with your appendix, your gallbladder, your pancreatitis, that electrolyte imbalance...
Sadly, if you call that competent.
It it weren't competent, it wouldn't be medicine's highest competency.
Surgical reconstruction of the human body is something no other medical specialty could accomplish.