If you ever have the misfortune of needing to go to an emergency room, requiring a hospital stay, being in need of a particular medication, or even just having a general encounter with your primary doctor, you would hope that all decisions regarding your care and health are being made with your best interest, the best outcomes, and the most scientific data taking top priority. Unfortunately, the business of medicine is too influential and powerful to allow that to happen.
I am not critical of businesses seeking profits. After all, the purpose of a business is to generate revenue and income for the business owner or its shareholders. It would be foolish to think that a business would make decisions that directly lead to loss of income or a deficit at the end of each year. Being profit-driven is not an evil act, nor is it something business owners need to be ashamed of.
What I am critical of, however, is when the profits sought by businesses are gained by engaging in behavior that is dishonest, deceitful, and/or harmful to those engaging in business with that group. If someone does not receive what they thought they were paying for, is sold goods that they do not need, or their wellbeing is jeopardized by the business they are engaging with, then the people doing that selling need to be reprimanded, held accountable, and ultimately stopped.
The way the real world works is that this kind of behavior… manipulative, greedy, harmful… will continue to exist no matter what. I would be foolish to think otherwise. And because I am so heavily involved with healthcare, that is where most of my attention resides. So, instead of trying to change that system or stop our current healthcare system from mistreating, harming, and ripping off today’s patients, I work to educate the public on where the biggest threats can be found, how they are being misled, mistreated, or harmed, and ways in which they can get alternative, more natural, safer, and usually much more effective options for managing and improving their health.
There are three areas you MUST pay attention to and be aware of. These are hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and health insurance companies. I’ll break this article into three parts. And the next two blog posts will address the pharmaceutical and health insurance companies.
Hospitals are businesses, and businesses seek profits. Profits come from customers. And you are the hospital’s customer. And like most businesses, they have regular meetings, often at the beginning of the week or month. I want you to imagine the Monday morning meetings in any local hospital. You’d like to think these meetings revolve around how to save more lives, how to make healthcare more accessible to more people, and how to improve the overall health of the community. Yeah, right! My guess is these meetings are centered on how to fill more hospital beds, how to get increased payments for the procedures they are providing, and how to get the doctors to order more tests, make more referrals, and do more procedures that make them the most money.
I recently encountered a situation where a patient may have needed their tonsils removed. I was surprised that the doctor did not suggest that procedure, as it had been such a common procedure in the past. When discussing it with a primary care doctor, he stated that they are doing much fewer tonsillectomies these days because insurance doesn’t reimburse for that procedure like they used to. He stated that the most popular surgeries and procedures are the ones that get the best reimbursements. And once the reimbursements for procedures or surgeries start to go down, doctors stop doing those procedures or surgeries as often. Yikes!
I once spoke to a surgeon who was well known for doing what is called vertebroplasty. This is where they inject cement into a fractured vertebra–often done in elderly people that have suffered a fracture due to osteoporosis. He explained it as a fairly simple procedure that took only minutes to complete, was fairly safe (although infection is possible, as is the cement leaking out into the spinal canal), and that it really was an out-patient procedure (meaning that the patient could leave the same day that the procedure was performed). However, he said that the hospital usually kept the patient overnight. When I asked why the hospital had them stay overnight if the procedure did not warrant that, he said the hospitals had lobbied well enough to convince Medicare to allow the overnight stay. This meant that the money to be made by this procedure would be much greater because they could get Medicare to pay for a much more costly overnight stay.
I could share dozens and dozens of examples, but it is critical to know that when it comes to hospitals, your health, well-being, and best interest does not always come first. They are profit-driven, with marketing teams vying for your business and strategists continually analyzing how to improve profit margins and grow their bottom line.
You must ask questions, get second opinions, seek alternatives, and be keenly aware of how decisions are being made while in the throes of any healthcare enterprise. There is a reason you see hospitals, urgent cares, and specialty centers popping up in every city, in multiple locations. There is a reason you see huge ads on billboards, at professional sporting events, on the radio, and on television for these hospital systems. Long gone are the days when the local doctor took care of your whole family, knew your family’s history, and cared for you in a way you would expect a doctor to care. Today’s healthcare system looks at you like a customer. The doctors are expected to keep you within their system, make referrals to other doctors within that system, and function more like a sales person than a healthcare provider.
