And, show me where a higher nurse-patient ratio has increased any of the items where, nationally, hospitals suck.
People bitch about hospitals because the bills are confusing, the communication sucks, and they get horrible MRSA infections.
Your nurse-patient ratio isn’t going to cure that, because even where the ratios are good, the numbers suck. All higher nurse-patient ratios work is to get the dues to the Nurses Unions higher.
It is amazing that on a conservative web site everyone is about cutting government costs, until it hits close.
This Medicare reimbursement issue is going to make care better, more efficient, and with fewer re-admits.
All the points you make sound really good....on paper. Unfortunately, caregivers and patients are humans, and mistakes will be made. Maybe the herd just needs to be thinned. If people can’t comprehend their discharge instructions (due to language problems, low IQ, or whatever) that’s not an overworked nurse’s problem. People need to take responsibility for their wellbeing or else they die. Simple as that. And what guarantee will there be in the future that reports won’t be falsified or made up? Especially if hospital funding is dependent on a rosy scenario?
MRSA is in the environment, it is not coming from hospitals anymore. Patients are bringing it into the hospital.
Nope, it is going to make physicians refuse to see these patients. They will overwhelm the ERs. I agree with lowering government cost, but I want to be paid a fair wage. I worked in a clinic where the doc got $30 from Medicare to see a patients. That is not sustainable.
I work in an inner city hospital and can tell you that these rules are not going to improve care, they are going to close hospitals. Our nurses are non-unionized, so I don’t know why you think that is such an issue, but it isn’t where I am.
No complication is entirely preventable, no bad outcome can be avoided every time. Sometimes patients get better, sometimes they don’t. Because Medicare won’t pay for catheter-caused urinary tract infections, hospitals now don’t use catheters nearly as much. There is not enough staff to be ready with bedpans every second because of other cuts in reimbursements and forced indigent care. So bedsore rates go up due to pts being left wet longer than they should. All of these mandates have unintended (?) consequences that are destroying the greatest health-care system in the world. (which got that way BEFORE government became so intrusive in case anybody noticed).
Medicare recently stopped paying if a patient is re-admitted within a certain number of days. Patients with COPD and CHF, for example, ‘bounce back’ all the time. They clear after a day or two of intense (very expensive) treatment and go home. They then relapse, often after a few good days, whether they are compliant with meds or not, because that is the nature of the disease (the ‘C’ in both cases stands for CHRONIC). If they are re-admitted, Medicare WON’T pay, but if you keep them longer Medicare also won’t pay because ‘length of stay’ is limited. These patients often require ICU and more (again expensive) treatments. Our hospital has a large population of non-compliant patients so will be losing money hand over fist as this policy expands. Given we also have a large indigent and medicaid population, it is only a matter of time before the cuts shut us down. We are already cutting physician hours in the ER and switching to nurse practitioners, because ‘we don’t have the numbers’. What that really means is ‘we don’t have the money.’
All these mandates and hoops and denials of payment come down to one thing. The government forces hospitals and physicians to provide medical care, and the government doesn’t want to pay for it. Hospital administrators have been playing this game and managing to stay open and even maintain a profit margin so far, because until now, most of this has affected physician reimbursement more than hospitals. Now that the hospitals themselves are being denied, when they are already strained, I think the game is over.
No hospital can sustain itself under these conditions. Costs of hiring enough people to try to prevent the unpreventable and not being paid for taking care of patients with major medical issues that by their nature make patients sick enough to be hospitalized often, coupled with increased indigent and Medicaid patients on whose care hospitals and doctors don’t even break even are going to close any hospital that is teetering now. Loss of Medicare as ‘punishment’ is going to push several over the edge.
Hospitals are businesses, and they have to make a profit to survive. They are going to close because of this government witholding of payment for services, especially as more and more people become dependent on government healthcare. Inner city hospitals who serve sicker, poorer, less compliant patients will go first, and there will be a great cry of ‘discrimination’ and ‘corporate greed’ and ‘racism’ when it happens.
Likely the government will start providing free transportation to the suburban hospitals which will then be overwhelmed and underpaid as their reimbursements drop, so they too will close.
I have no idea what people will do then, I suppose they can show up at their local Obamacare or IRS office with their MI or stroke or appendicitis.
O2