Dear editor,
I am a concerned citizen watching events unfold that I could never have imagined a few short years ago. As a society, we have relied on our medical institutions and staff to provide the best treatment options available and have never needed this more than now. While it is possibl…
I am a concerned citizen watching events unfold that I could never have imagined a few short years ago. As a society, we have relied on our medical institutions and staff to provide the best treatment options available and have never needed this more than now. While it is possible to understand why broad incentive plans were put in place early on, I wonder why after TWO years, we are not making incentive improvements. This is a standard business model and, let’s face it, hospitals are businesses too. There are more treatment options in place and Covid is now being likened to a common cold or flu. Yet, hospitals are still being more incentivized for negative outcomes than positive ones. Who hasn’t heard of someone being turned away and told to come back only if they become severely ill? It defies belief that there would ever be an incentive for the death of a patient. After all, who would want to pay a mechanic for breaking their car or worse, totaling it? Do we pay car salesmen by the number of test drives they take in a day, or only those resulting in a sale? If we continue to incentivize negative results, then that is exactly what we will get. Let us not forget the first promise of the Hippocratic Oath, “do no harm”. We need to remind the hospitals of that oath and encourage subsidies that depend upon positive patient outcomes and recoveries.
Submitted to Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald:
Dear editor,
I am a concerned citizen watching events unfold that I could never have imagined a few short years ago. As a society, we have relied on our medical institutions and staff to provide the best treatment options available and have never needed this more than now. While it is possible to understand why broad incentive plans were put in place early on, I wonder why after TWO years, we are not making incentive improvements. This is a standard business model and, let’s face it, hospitals are businesses too. There are more treatment options in place and Covid is now being likened to a common cold or flu. Yet, hospitals are still being more incentivized for negative outcomes than positive ones. Who hasn’t heard of someone being turned away and told to come back only if they become severely ill? It defies belief that there would ever be an incentive for the death of a patient. After all, who would want to pay a mechanic for breaking their car or worse, totaling it? Do we pay car salesmen by the number of test drives they take in a day, or only those resulting in a sale? If we continue to incentivize negative results, then that is exactly what we will get. Let us not forget the first promise of the Hippocratic Oath, “do no harm”. We need to remind the hospitals of that oath and encourage subsidies that depend upon positive patient outcomes and recoveries.