America’s Best Hospitals?
Acute care requires immediate care near home because you need it now. So, how does one of America’s Best hospitals, according to US News and World Reports, compare to my two experiences in private Indian hospitals. Not nearly as good.
In December 2009 I found out when a leg infection turned serious requiring a total of 15 night’s hospitalization and rehabilitation with aggressive, intravenous antibiotic drugs at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, a county owned healthcare facility of over 800-beds. Placards adorn a wall of every room promising “very good care.” Placards also tout the hospitals listing among Best Hospitals for 6-years straight and nursing accolades. The PR machine is working overtime.
The internal medicine “hospitalists” were more intent on moving me out of the hospital than allowing me to get well before leaving. I did not feel well when first told I was “medically fit” to be discharged. By contrast, the doctors won’t discharge from the private Indian hospitals until you are well enough. None of the doctors at Sarasota Memorial spent the time that my Indian doctors spent explaining the nature of the infection, the course of treatment and the roadmap back to health. Physician assistants are often your surrogate doctor in American hospitals. If you don’t ask questions, you are left in the dark. It’s almost as if the doctor’s want you left in the dark, so you have to come back to them again for answers and of course another office visit charge. Florida doctors are gaming the medicare system in my opinion because of the lower reimbursement rates in an effort to make more income at the expense of quality patient care.
The system fell short of my expectations and certainly my experiences with nurses in our private Indian hospitals. Patient to nurse ratios were too high to provide the level of care our private Indian hospitals provide. Waits for a so-called “personal care specialist” were up to 45-minutes..
Sarasota Memorial is an aging facility with an air ventilation system that is held together with scotch tape and band aides. There was an almost constant cacophony of annoying sounds emanating from the duct work in the East tower punctuated by the “rat-tat-tat” sound of a thousand hammers pounding on the metal ductwork. This is inexcusable. The rooms were tiny and inadequate compared to the spacious modern rooms in our private Indian hospitals. Replacement of major sections of Sarasota Memorial is in the planning stages, but like many American facilities, the infrastructure is outdated. So, this is one of the Best Hospitals in America? It doesn’t hold a candle to my two experiences in two separate private Indian hospitals since 2005.
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Within the first 24-hours at a nearby rehabilitation center affiliated with the Sarasota Memorial system, a blood draw-lab error resulted in an unnecessary trip back to the ER at the hospital. Additional cost? $3,500.
The entire hospital bill for eight nights was $30,223.41. That does not include separate bills from each of the doctors who saw me. It took two full weeks after discharge to receive the bill. In the private Indian hospitals the bill is ready at the time of discharge fully itemized together with your medical records for which I was asked to pay an extra $589.
After checking Hospitalvictims.com, I learned that Sarasota Memorial Hospital offers a 64% discount to the insurance company if a patient is insured. Hospitalvictims.com also informs me that Sarasota Memorial charges 259% more than John’s Hopkins, the nation’s number one hospital in that US News and World Reports ranking of Best Hospitals in America. What’s wrong here? Let’s check some medicine costs.
$37.34 for simvastatin 40mg, a generic cholesterol drug available for as little as 8 cents per tablet at any number of pharmacies. That’s 466 times the cost at a local pharmacy; antibiotic ciprofloxacin 500 mg was $27.56 per pill available at the local Walmart pharmacy for 16.6 cents per tablet. That’s 225 times the everyday cost. While in the Emergency room the charge was only $11.02 for the same tablet.
Vancomycin, the IV antibiotic was $196 a unit at the hospital for the same unit that Sarasota Memorial’s rehab center charged $37.50 from an outside pharmacy. Outrageous markups such as these examples are rampant in the hospital industry. In India, the national government has imposed maximum retail prices on all drugs to protect consumers from excesses.
There’s more! The rehab center nursing staff continued to mis-dispense my medicines 3 to 5 times daily. If you do the math, up to 3,500 drug dispense errors could be happening each week at this facility.
It’s one of the reasons I feel the need to proclaim “I survived another American hospital experience.” Whereas, after a stay at a private, new Indian hospital I would proclaim “I love Indian doctors.” You leave feeling fit and well as opposed to feeling like you barely survived and need to go home to get well.
In fact I wasn’t well when discharged and I blame inattentive, impersonal doctoring. Barely a month later, I encountered a relapse and the need for 21-more days of outpatient IV antibiotics at the same hospital. The billed charges were over $40,000.
What would the treatment at Sarasota Memorial Hospital have been in a private Indian hospital? No more than $7,000 US and it would have included all doctor charges. Put that on your healthcare reform agenda and process it!
