Required reading for everyone who lives in the United States, or who is thinking about doing so: Steven Brill delivered an amazing piece of investigative journalism in February 2013 on the U.S. health care system in Time Magazine. Hopefully everyone will read it before they develop a serious illness, but regardless it lays bare some of the reasons why the health …
You sprain your ankle badly, and aren’t sure if it’s broken or not. It’s 6pm on a Friday evening, so you head to the ER to have it x-rayed. At triage you ask “how much might this cost me?” Typically, nobody working in the hospital at that moment will be able to even take a guess. A new study out …
Required reading for everyone who lives in the United States, or who is thinking about doing so: Stephen Brill delivered an amazing piece of investigative journalism last week on the U.S. health care system in Time Magazine. Hopefully everyone will read it before they develop a serious illness, but regardless it lays bare some of the reasons why the health care …
“Mommy, my tummy hurts.” It’s 4am. Your 8-year-old son is shaking you awake. Â After you confirm that in fact, he is having abdominal pain and not just a bad dream, you head down to the local hospital emergency department to have him checked out. Little did you suspect, a variety of factors beyond your control in the next 2 hours, …
Published at Hospital Impact on September 15, 2010 The clinical scenario is familiar to many doctors. An elderly man arrives at California Pacific Medical Center’s emergency department in San Francisco at 11 p.m. on a Saturday by ambulance, unconscious and severely ill. A neighbor had called 911 after he failed to answer the phone or door. No friends or relatives …
Part 1 in a Series. So the story goes like this. A patient of mine needed a chest x-ray. He doesn’t have health insurance, so rather than just give him a requisition and send him to the local hospital, I decided to do a little calling around on his behalf to find out what the damage would be… Vendor #1: …
