Regarding “Insurers rush out new moms” (Main news, June 18):
I remember walking into Hollywood Memorial Hospital in Hollywood, Fla. (where my mother was a patient) and standing in amazement at the first thing I saw. No, it was not a new MRI machine or the dazzle of a fast-paced trauma center. It was a brand new, full-size McDonald’s. Now while I have nothing against McDonald’s, this phenomenon struck me as the new symbol of medicine. Bright, high-tech and fast-food oriented–or, more properly, fast-discharge oriented.
I am as guilty as the next physician in trying to discharge patients earlier and earlier after surgery. This is being driven, however, by third-party payers. If I am not cost-effective with good statistics and rapid-discharge rates, then I will not be competitive in the managed-care world, and my patients will be turned over to another doctor who is.
The same is true for hospitals. Inefficient facilities will lose managed-care contracts to more efficient facilities. Is this quality care? Humanistic care? I don’t know. I do know people want good care and yet don’t want it to hurt their pocketbooks. I am not sure how to do both and do them well.
Health-care providers and insurance corporations should stand back and take a look at where we are going, because if we do not, the future may be “I’ll have a McDelivery, two jaundiced babies, a side order of maternal infection and maybe even a death at the drive-up hospital of life.”
