by the husband of a patient who needed medical help: OpinionJournal – Extra.
There’s No Place Like Home
What I learned from my wife’s month in the British medical system.BY DAVID ASMAN
"Mr. Asman, could you come down to the gym? Your wife appears to be having a small problem." In typical British understatement, this was the first word I received of my wife’s stroke.
Very interesting account of the similarities and differences in the systems. Oh, and his wife seems to be doing well.
I read this article this AM, overall it ‘s very good but I’m left with a couple of questions. First, what the heck was she doing in an inpatient facility in England for a month? She must have had some significant complications or else they do things different in the UK as I can’t remember a stroke I’ve had in the hospital for a month since residency, and those were placement problems generally. The other question is what’s with the $27000 for 10 PT treatments? Was she in inpatient rehab or did she have the Blue Man Group as her therapists?
Yes, some of my thoughts exactly. One of the issues with many people — and here’s a guy with some kind of journalism credentials — is there are so many things they get wrong.
The only sense I can make out of a $27,000 bill is that it was an inpatient stay. Even then, there is the kookiness of billing compared to what you can actually collect.
And the whole PFO thing — well, she had a stroke and she had a PFO; not exactly proof. Still some controversy about cause and effect and also best treatment. But who’s going to argue with a world-renown cardiologist?
I read that article and while it didn’t occur to me to wonder why she was inpatient for a month, it did occur to me to wonder why we have such a hard time balancing great medicine and great people skills.
My second thought was $2700/visit for PT??? What the heck were they doing with or to her?
THAT ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN A QUITE BIASED NEWSPAPER
Dear Dr. Zeigler,
First of all, it’s called a Caps Lock key, and it’s to the left of the keyboard. The only people who type in all caps now are those who are too lazy to punctuate or who are off their meds.
Second, there seems to be little bias in the article, whether or not it was first published in the American Spectator or that hotbed of activism, the Wall Street Journal.
So, calm down and just read the article. The message is the message, medium isn’t the issue.
Not a bad article. I might even forgive him for referring to my British collegues as “ambulance drivers.”
That said, I’m heartbroken as a medical professional that his wife did not receive the same level of care (ie tPA) that she would have received in the US.