What Scares Doctors? Being the Patient Hospitalization too often means insufficient time with the doctor, errors in treatment and a big bill that adds insult to injury. Weighing in with tales of botched operations and battles for reimbursement, patients and caregivers alike offered their prescriptions for healing an ailing system too focused on the bottom line
Your story on the harrowing experiences that doctors have had as hospital patients [May 1] only scratched the surface of what is wrong with our health-care system, which is in a rapid downhill spiral. The interests of consumers and caregivers are losing out, and the winners are the publicly traded insurance companies, which make hundreds of millions in profit as they cut patient services. Why are those companies allowed to make such huge sums of money while some hospitals cannot afford to upgrade their technology or are forced to close altogether? It is time for the entire industry to undergo fundamental reform. MICHAEL PECK, M.D. Rockville, Md.
I have observed that interns lack oversight, senior clinicians lack accountability and nurses need to be reminded to double-check medication dosages. We all make mistakes because we are human. But too many physicians avoid oversight and accountability to one another to hide their fallibility. The way to make health care as error free as possible is to ensure that no decision is made in isolation. Patient safety will not improve until doctors lead the way by openly examining what they do and how they do it--and by embracing change. RICHARD BJERKE, M.D. Pittsburgh, Pa.
I received superb care at the Mayo clinic in Rochester, Minn., for a malignant brain tumor, which is now in remission. Still, I was frightened by your cover story. Have I been blessed with dumb luck, or am I being treated by one of the best hospitals? Your article probably made countless people question the wisdom of trusting the medical world, and may have also discouraged some from seeking the care they urgently need. JACK MOSER Osceola, Wis.
The problems you described can be fixed with sufficient professional and support staff. But even as hospital profits are at all-time highs, staff numbers are being cut. Why don't hospital administrators hire enough staff to provide patients with better, safer care? Money is the answer. Maintaining or increasing current nonphysician staff levels cuts into the bottom line, reducing profits for both the hospitals and doctors. When doctors whine about substandard patient care, they're refusing to recognize that hospitals are understaffed. GEORGE M. DAVIS Fuquay-Varina, N.C.
You devoted nine pages to little more than half a dozen anecdotes decrying the sorry state of American medicine. Such fear mongering does a disservice to medical professionals who struggle to make every day one for which we should be grateful. But humans are not meant to live 90-plus years, nor are we meant to violate our bodies with stainless steel, latex and pharmaceuticals in the hope of fulfilling aspirations to immortality. Some price must be paid for defying fate, nature and God. The sooner we accept that bad things will happen despite the excellent care we receive, the sooner we will appreciate that we live longer, more comfortably and, dare I say, more happily than any previous generation. TOM PALUCH, M.D. San Diego