Staying Fit And Healthy Is Not Enough
Regardless of how well we take care of ourselves, sooner or later we’ll need institutional help. How those close to us handle this is something that might better be addressed before it happens. If everyone involved keeps the Golden Rule in mind, however it may be expressed, then things will work out OK. Bad things happen when this is lost through indifference, negligence or carlessness.
Nick Bradbury has been involved in a number of successful activities, including Bradbury Software which offers the FeedDemon product. I found his blog through researching his flagship product, and noticed a post that didn’t fit the usual software product stuff. Named
Hospitals Are No Place for Sick People, it describes his family’s recent encounter with the health system, and in many ways is a view of every one’s future. The encounter was not a good one, and in fact points out shortcomings that are not only disturbing, but becoming much more common. I strongly urge everyone to read it, and then do some basic planning against that day. To paraphrase Nick, if this can happen to those who have successfully contributed to the good of us all, where money was not an issue, medical talent not lacking, and at a premier medical institution, then it can happen to any of us.
I have been amazingly fortunate in not having been in the production side of a hospital. Until recently, I more or less thought that the myriad problems of the US’ medical system could be addressed more or less with technology, and by clearly defining who the customer is, singular case. This is simplistic and wrong. What Nick described is not a failure of technology, or incentives, but instead can only be described as a systemic failure on a human level. It got that way through a long and probably untraceable sequence of good intentions, an unintended consequence, long in the making, of using medical insurance as a way to circumvent wage and price controls during the Second World War. However it happened is no longer important. What to do about it is another matter entirely.
No amount of whiz-bang techno stuff can possibly compensate for indifference, insensitivity, and occasional incompetence. Nor, for that matter, will enforcing the Hippocratic Oath’s injunction against doing any harm do any good, even if it were possible. Perhaps the best that can be done, today, is for more people to become aware of the problem, recognize that the current system is beyond repair, and plan for the eventuality of a hospital visit as best we can. We as patient nee customer will certainly suffer, but so will those closest to us, and at least being aware of some of the processes, many not pleasant but most required, to help mitigate the shocks. The medical practitioners deal with these things every day, and have to be inured to the suffering for them to be effective. Knowing what and how they deal with it may help their dealings with us when that time comes.