31–40 of 85 posts
I honestly felt like my job was to comfort the harried staff.
When I got my meds the next day, they only cost $0 because I used up my entire $6k deductible that night.
I know a rural guy who was once damn near ready to start a fistfight to get his wife out of the local hospital AMA. He believed they weren't qualified or equipped to actually give her proper care and were basically just stalling with useless treatments. And, at least as she tells the story, he was absolutely fucking right to drive her down the highway to a hospital in the nearest "real" city. I guess word gets around when the only hospital within 25 miles has a habit of falling back on explanations like "it's just heartburn; the next round of antacids will definitely fix it".
The shockingly low priority hospitals give to patient sleep might be a factor that the authors missed.
For baby #2, the focus was 100% on getting the nurse and doctor through their appointed tasks. 14 hour old baby is actively nursing? Too bad, hand her over, its time to do the measurements. We got so fed up that we requested early checkout, was told "they'll be over in 5 minutes to do last-minute checkout", and after 45 minutes of waiting, we just left.
Sometimes, I suspect "against medical advice" actually means "expected medical advice that was never actually delivered".
After all that time, it just felt less risky to go home and get some baby aspirin. They made us sign a waiver as we left.
I left on day 4 of 6 combatting a MRSA infection. I left on 12/31 because the hospital could not tell me if my current insurance (COBRA) would cover the bills for days 5/6. Absurd. Turns out I was right in my estimations that the course of IV would suffice and also that the remaining days would not be covered. I feel like I 'survived' the hospital system, not MRSA.
As a physician probably my single most feared infection is a MRSA (or any Staph.) bloodstream infection. It’s a sticky bacterium that likes to destroy heart valves and joints. I’m personally a bit of a medical nihilist but antibiotics often work to treat it and I would not be eager to do the n=1 trial of the shortest effective duration.
The shockingly low priority hospitals give to patient sleep might be a factor that the authors missed.
Seriously! When my first child was born, we stayed as long as possible, basically until the nurses more or less kicked us out. There was tons of support, and it was as pleasant an environment as I can easily imagine. For baby #2, the focus was 100% on getting the nurse and doctor through their appointed tasks. 14 hour old baby is actively nursing? Too bad, hand her over, its time to do the measurements. We got so fed…
They follow guardrails closely aligned with insurance and liability too. Unfortunately.
I've witnessed several people AMA from hospitals. All of them were not being treated well for pain and even in cases where there were calls for psych staff to help - there was imo below minimal mental / emotional support given. In a couple of the cases the people were able to find better pain medicine on the street faster than they could even get a doctor to answer a nurses call to deny - and being able to find just…
When it wasn’t as well-managed my experience was that apathy among medical professionals was the norm and compassion was the exception. I’ve had particularly bad experiences in the ER and I’m reluctant to even go there anymore. There’s a whole performative thing you have to do at the ER to “demonstrate” that you’re not a drug seeker and it’s difficult for me because I am somewhat stoical in my expression of pain.
I don’t know what’s wrong with the medical system that has created such apathy toward pain, but it feels like it goes beyond just concern over drug-seeking. It’s a critical problem.
I left on day 4 of 6 combatting a MRSA infection. I left on 12/31 because the hospital could not tell me if my current insurance (COBRA) would cover the bills for days 5/6. Absurd. Turns out I was right in my estimations that the course of IV would suffice and also that the remaining days would not be covered. I feel like I 'survived' the hospital system, not MRSA.
You survived the insurance system (or rather, despite it).
The hospitals can't tell you what is covered at the time of service, only well post facto (I literally got a call last week about a copay from surgery I had in May 2022). IMHO most of that blame lies with the insurance companies, but the hospitals are complicit.
This paragraph caught my eye: > The financial burden is not imposed on the patient only; the healthcare system is also affected by the consequence of leaving against medical advice. Reports have shown that the cost of an average stay was USD 3716.00 for those patients who left as planned. However, patients who left against medical advice and were readmitted had an average bill of USD 10,761.56 for staying 4.7 days in…
Honestly this is an area where I'd invite Elon Musk to come in and disrupt. In the same way that he disrupted space travel and electric vehicles in part by asking, "do we need to do everything in the expected high cost manner"? Question if you need certain things to be at certain medical grade for everything. I get that staff is expensive, but everything else seems WAY overpriced.