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Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

minnesota.cbslocal.com

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Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#41

Post by ars »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #34
lylecubed wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which makes their actions less evil than the article implies. And accusing the mother of having a history of mental illness in an attempt to get conservatorship when no such history exists? Sounds pretty damned evil to me. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Even if they had their patient's best interests at heart, that doesn't excuse what they did.

We don't have any information on the parents at all. I know its good to give parents the benefit of the doubt, but these people could have been ignorant, suspicious and contrary. Or 100 other things, that make a trained physician wary of trusting them with anything as important as a critically ill patient.

> We don't have any information on the parents at all.

I'm not sure what you read, but there is plenty of information about the parents. They are quoted, they have videos, they have facebook posts.

There is no reason to see them as mentally incompetent.

> could have been ignorant, suspicious and contrary.

Makes no difference. They have the right to stop medical treatment whenever they want. They have the right to leave the hospital and take their daughter whenever they want.

Not to mention the patient was over 18 and wanted to leave, and the hospital didn't let them.

> wary of trusting them with anything as important as a critically ill patient.

Too bad. Then you explain to them how to help her. The hospital has no legal right to hold someone prisoner.

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#42

Post by ThrustVectoring »

arielweisberg wrote: post #8

The medical profession really scares me. They have no respect or concern for patients and are largely going through the motions of providing care with no concern for successful outcomes. I find this to be consistently true in every encounter. I fired my last PCP because they lied about treating me for depression complete with fictional prescriptions. I found out when I couldn't get disability insurance (at a sane pri…

>And the craziest part is that as part of HIPAA you can ask the doctor to correct the record, but they are under no obligation to do so.

Couldn't you sue (or threaten to sue) them for libel? It's a written false statement that is injurious to your reputation.

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#43

Post by ars »

gouggoug wrote: post #36

I am having a hard time understanding how Mayo was able to basically hold one of their patient hostage. Isn't that akin to kidnapping? But also: What prevented Alyssa from getting up her bed and walk out? When did her parents start "figuring out how to escape " and how long for? If they were at that point were they believed they needed to "escape" from the hospital, why didn't they call the police?

> What prevented Alyssa from getting up her bed and walk out?

They assigned two nurses to watch her day and night.

> why didn't they call the police?

They probably figured the police would automatically believe the hospital.

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#45

Post by luddaite »

larkeith wrote: post #38
luddaite wrote: post #17

It's easy to attribute this whole situation to greed and/or malice but I think that fails Hanlon's razor. I can easily see this whole situation occurring because of poor communication and the culture of paternalism in medicine. It is not hard to imagine a team of healthcare providers that know or think they know what is good for their patient and do a poor job explaining why they are making the decisions that they ar…

While I agree this type of situation is likely most often due to miscommunication, that doesn't preclude certain instances from being malicious in intent (possibly including this one - we really don't have enough information to attribute motive and cause, but there are enough odd behaviors on the Mayo clinic's part that I hesitate to employ Hanlon's razor). The hospital's ethics council only works as a solution to gr…

Ethics councils are often hybrid in nature, including members of the local community that do not stand to benefit financially from patient care. I agree that informing patients about the presence of these governing bodies is a difficult problem. However, many bad situations would be avoided if the information was disseminated as standard procedure at the earliest possible convenience (before disagreement has a chance to arise).

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#46

Post by ars »

luddaite wrote: post #17

It's easy to attribute this whole situation to greed and/or malice but I think that fails Hanlon's razor. I can easily see this whole situation occurring because of poor communication and the culture of paternalism in medicine. It is not hard to imagine a team of healthcare providers that know or think they know what is good for their patient and do a poor job explaining why they are making the decisions that they ar…

> I can easily see this whole situation occurring because of poor communication and the culture of paternalism in medicine.

I can see it starting that way, but there is an absolute line the hospital should have never crossed: People have the right to chose what medical treatment they want.

They crossed the line.

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#47

Post by lylecubed »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #34
lylecubed wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which makes their actions less evil than the article implies. And accusing the mother of having a history of mental illness in an attempt to get conservatorship when no such history exists? Sounds pretty damned evil to me. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Even if they had their patient's best interests at heart, that doesn't excuse what they did.

We don't have any information on the parents at all. I know its good to give parents the benefit of the doubt, but these people could have been ignorant, suspicious and contrary. Or 100 other things, that make a trained physician wary of trusting them with anything as important as a critically ill patient.

> these people could have been ignorant, suspicious and contrary

So if they were "suspicious" the hospital is justified in committing kidnapping, even after being turned down for conservatorship by two judges?

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#48

Post by lylecubed »

PiggySpeed wrote: post #40
lylecubed wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context of this conversation is the mayo clinic kidnapping a patient. If you want to talk about the homeless problem outside of that context, start another post.

Context change was implied as soon as the respondent began with the words "on the flip side...". The topic in this sub-tree is now about that "flip side". Discussion has expanded into new areas.

No. You replied to my comment. If you want to spin off into your own convo about homelessness in general, reply directly to the parent and leave me out of it.

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#49

Post by ars »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #35
fipple wrote: post #16

Imagine what happens to people like this who have no family.

They stay in a reputable medical institution and get better after a debilitating aneurism?

That demonstrates an ignorance of what the medical profession is like in practice.

People without family to watch them get terrible care.

There are exceptions (ICU for example is usually pretty good), but any care that doesn't have someone watching/caring for them 24/7 is going to be bad.

You NEED someone in the hospital watching out for you, unless you are in a unit where there is a permanent nurse on duty with you (not doing rounds). Typically family or friends fulfill this role because hospitals can not afford to do it.

Re: Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic

#50

Post by luddaite »

hrktb wrote: post #37
luddaite wrote: post #17

It's easy to attribute this whole situation to greed and/or malice but I think that fails Hanlon's razor. I can easily see this whole situation occurring because of poor communication and the culture of paternalism in medicine. It is not hard to imagine a team of healthcare providers that know or think they know what is good for their patient and do a poor job explaining why they are making the decisions that they ar…

Is there a need to attribute to malice when all the incentives are stacked against the correct behavior ? Poor communication partly occurs because at no point does the Clinic have to go against its interest, there is that much less friction in the decisions taken. Ethics is an issue but it seems that wouldn’t be sufficient as a focus for a solution.

I agree that the monetary incentives are definitely incorrectly aligned in the current healthcare system as is. That said, I don't think that monetary incentives are the only incentives present here. Most physicians don't go into medicine only to make money. There are easier ways to make more money. From my experience, most healthcare providers genuinely care about the patients' well being. That is why I bristle whenever people rush to attribute a physician's actions to greed. I totally agree with you that a better incentive structure would improve the system.
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