How much care is the patient entitled to?

[Lucca]

I am genuinely what the medical students, residents, attendings in this forum think. I know I am pre-med but I didn't post it there because I wanted an ideological perspective equipped with more real experience and not just sentiment alone.

If the patient walks into the hospital, do they deserve their care? Where does it stop?

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[NontradCA]

About tree fiddy.

 

[Ismet]

Moving to pre-allo. Plenty of med students and physicians frequent pre-allo and you will get just as good answers there.

If a patient "walks into the hospital," they are most likely seeking emergency care or are presenting with an acute symptom. At the very least, people deserve the care and/or resources they need in order to be treated or at least stable enough to go home or to an intermediate unit. Sometimes that means sending them home with a z-pak, sometimes that means admitting them with workup for all kinds of problems. Not all their problems are going to be solved during their admission, which is why outpatient follow-up is important, but they still "deserve" to have their problems addressed by someone. I don't think there's a cap to how much care a person deserves, and I don't think anyone but the patient or their proxy can decide that. But then you start getting into end-of-life/palliative care, which is a whole other can of worms.

Then again I'm probably just a naive 3rd year.

 

[alpinism]

For free?

Stabilization and treatment of acute life threatening conditions.

i.e. not chronic non-life threatening conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, COPD, heartburn, IBS, arthritis, etc...

In that case, get medicaid or insurance.

 

[Beargryllz]

It depends on what they can pay for

You wouldn't enslave your teacher or your cashier, so why enslave physicians?

If a patient can pay for healthcare, that is awesome. If they can't, under what god-awful pretense can you force me to work on them?

 

[dbeast]

EMTALA

 

[Boolean]

For free?

Stabilization and treatment of acute life threatening conditions.

i.e. not chronic non-life threatening conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, COPD, heartburn, IBS, arthritis, etc...

In that case, get medicaid or insurance.

Concur.

 

[Lucca]

If they can't pay for treatment of non-life threatening conditions that lead to a life-threatening admit, shouldn't we treat the non-life threatening condition? Is there no ethical burden there?

 

[mik30102]

I concur that in our current system it would be unfair to force physicians to treat people for 0 compensation. Which is why I strongly support universal health care... (I firmly believe all needed/usual care is a basic human right)

Example: I regulary have dealt with people in the pharmacy who could not afford their medication. I feel though these people are deserving of their medicine and should receive it regardless of ability to pay (assuming of course its not a pointless me-to brand name drug, or for cosmetic reasons).

 

[Boolean]

If they can't pay for treatment of non-life threatening conditions that lead to a life-threatening admit, shouldn't we treat the non-life threatening condition? Is there no ethical burden there?

Using this logic we could continue stepping backwards until we treat everything. What is the distinguishing factor between a non-life threatening condition that leads to a life-threatening admit and other similar conditions? By treating the acute life threatening condition, you are treating on the basis that the patient will die if you do not intervene with treatment.