A recent experience at John C. Lincoln Hospital - Deer Valley, Phoenix, AZ, leads me to wonder whether our whole health care system should just be scrapped. When a person is admitted through an emergency department (which went smoothly enough) and then, family members looking out for the patient can't seem to connect with the hospitalist or the cardiologist caring for the patient, there is something terribly wrong.
Nursing staff was wonderful; no complaints. This is a physician problem. A note was placed in the patient's chart requesting that the hospitalist &/or cardiologist who had admitted the patient (which was never determined who exactly did admit the patient) contact the patient's son (who also has power of attorney for health care). No contact. A day passed, and an echo-cardiogram was allegedly performed by someone, presumptively the cardiologist. No contact. The patient's son then, finally, demanded that the charge nurse contact a physician on-call and have that doctor call him in the patient's room. The poor cardiologist who called hadn't ever seen the patient, and had no clue what his/her status was, and was out of the loop. He was able to report the findings of the echo, but that was really it. No other contact from anyone who had any knowledge of the patient's case.
By the next morning, the patient wanted to go home, and there didn't seem to be any reason for the patient to stay. No physician contact, either in person, or by phone. Finally, by lunch-time, the patient was checked out, against medical advice (AMA), except in this case, there was no medical advice by which to check out against!
Needless to say, the patient's son won't be taking the patient to John C. Lincoln, Deer Valley again. Bad experience, and it could have been a bad outcome if the patient hadn't had a family member to look out after him/her.
Something is broke, and needs fixing...
No comments:
Post a Comment