The state of healthcare...
It's so much worse than I imagined. I asked my Emergency Medicine attending how he handles the obvious drug seekers who come through our department on a regular basis. I wish I hadn't asked. You see, I know that pain is pain, whether physical or emotional; but I have branded myself as someone who seeks to relieve pain in others - I mean, isn't that what medicine is about? Well, apparently I am still quite naive. Mr. Attending Doc broke it down for me last night.
The people who come in with gun shot wounds or heart failure or with some other major life altering catastrophe that youngsters like me are itching to get our hands on (my snarkiness, not his) don't pay their bills. The ones who come to the ER admitting that they just need a prescription refill or exaggerating their symptoms to get Percocet instead of Ibuprofen, they are the ones who pay. Why? Because they are addicts and we are their dealer of choice and EVERY addict knows that you gotta pay your dealer. We are safer than street dealers because we wont hunt them down a beat them to within an inch of their lives.
So what do you do? Major public hospitals are in trouble in the DC area and need money like we need blood. How do you save lives and your community hospital without losing your moral center?
"If you're out to get the honey, then you don't go killing all the bees"
Maybe I'm just sleep deprived...
The people who come in with gun shot wounds or heart failure or with some other major life altering catastrophe that youngsters like me are itching to get our hands on (my snarkiness, not his) don't pay their bills. The ones who come to the ER admitting that they just need a prescription refill or exaggerating their symptoms to get Percocet instead of Ibuprofen, they are the ones who pay. Why? Because they are addicts and we are their dealer of choice and EVERY addict knows that you gotta pay your dealer. We are safer than street dealers because we wont hunt them down a beat them to within an inch of their lives.
So what do you do? Major public hospitals are in trouble in the DC area and need money like we need blood. How do you save lives and your community hospital without losing your moral center?
"If you're out to get the honey, then you don't go killing all the bees"
Maybe I'm just sleep deprived...