"Bad Medicine" Forbes new cover story

[lisichka]

http://www.forbes.com/healthcare/forbes/2008/0310/086.html

ur opinion: specialty or general hospitals?

i am leaning towards specialty hospitals, especially in cardiology and spine surgery.

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[AwesomO]

I've worked in both as a student.
I would say as a patient or physician I would definitely prefer a small private specialty hospital.
-Infectious control was great
-The nursing staff was well staffed and compensated which makes a huge difference.
-In a specialty hospital when you say order a CT the staff has them down in the CT machine in 30 minutes tops, in a general hospital a patient could spend all day waiting for a CT. Don't even get me started on labs
-Since these hospitals are competing with the large general hospitals they go out of their way to ensure quality is high.

Obviously whenever you have a monopoly be it market or govt generated it's a bad thing. Personally I would lean towards a system of smaller hospitals. They need not all be specialized, as I've seen small general community hospitals run just as efficiently as the specialty hospitals. We can still keep large academic centers in urban areas, but I think the majority of the population could be treated at smaller hospitals.

 

[Faebinder]

There is no doubt that hospitals are a major source of the money problem in medicine. They control how much they charge for their services and they take the bigger piece of the pie all the time. They are blunt about what they will allow you to do even if patient's safety is jeapordized. Want better scopes for your surgery? Want better charting electronic system? Want the CT scan faster? You actually want your practice run your way? Not if the hospital doesnt want it to be that way. What? You wanna object? Fine, go find yourself another hospital to work in... but let us remind you that there are no "specialty hospitals" around. You have to file a certificate of need to open such a center and clearly there is no need around our big bad *** hospital. So take it or leave to a different area of practice.

Major hospitals are tyrants of the medical field. They have no competition anymore and are allowed to shift decision making from patient caring doctors to money hungry hospital upper staff.