www.latimes.com
The article says that the poverty rate in the area is 20%. That's almost the highest of any community in all of CA.
It’s definitely not safe for rural hospitals to try to offer services without significant volume. I’ve seen my share of disasters where a rural hospital should’ve shipped something out far earlier than they did. In all reality, rural hospitals should just merge with a larger system so they have access to easy transfers and competent staff. Rural hospitals also need to be ok with merging services with other rural hospitals. In NW Ohio, where my wife grew up, there probably are 10 rural hospitals in a relatively small area. About half offer maternity care, usually delivering less than 200 or so a year. But any discussion of merger sets off 200 year old rivalries and bizarre hatred for nearby towns. It’s all just very odd to me.
This is definitely an issue with all hospitals, but a bigger problem with rural ones.
I suspect the only thing that would make (2) happen at this point is if the average young person becomes disillusioned with the whole moving-away-for-college thing.
These are the folks that think, when someone dies, that means someone killed them.
"Don't send me to that **** hole in the city." Patient is generally referring to the tertiary care center that my group also staffs and I frequently work.
That's one of my favorite complaints when the patient complains about all the ER doctors at one of your sister facilities but they're all staffed by the same people. It shows you how ridiculous Press Ganey is when they say they always get good care at 'X' facility but always get awful care at 'Y' facility. It also helps when you have a slow facility where it always gets the best PG scores and another busy facility that routinely gets awful scores and it's the same docs. Admin won't understand that so much more than what we control goes into it but at least the hard data is there.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Press Ganey, damn Press Ganey, and statistics.
It’s because much of their experience is related to RNs, techs, CT etc and nothing to do with docs.
Yep worked in a hospital system like this. Slow FSED that saw 20 patients per day always has PGs in the mid to high 90s. Main level 1 trauma center always in the 50s. Same ER physicians staffing all facilities. Admin was convinced more AIDET (or whatever the ****) was the answer.
It's almost as if what it takes to really, actually satisfy patients is
This goes back to having a hospital in an area that can’t support a hospital. You can’t pay bills seeing a majority of Medicaid and self pay patients. You need insured patients and many times these rural hospitals are still within reasonable driving distance of a larger hospital so many of the insured patients go up the road. Less money for the hospital means lower pay for the workers which typically will attract lower quality workers which lowers the hospital’s reputation which means more people getting care up the road and the cycle continues until the hospital finally shuts down.
The rural hospital I’m familiar with actually doesn’t have incredible administrative bloat and the administrators have reasonable salaries. They just have an awful payor mix and not enough procedures to make money.
That’s an interesting point you bring up regarding regulatory burden. I think we’d likely see better rural care with less regulations in those settings. And honestly, maybe in every setting.
Nope, it's that the worried well are reassured when they no actual medical problems while actual sick patients reflect their own QOL in surveys.
And imo that’s great.
I mean, the first part is exactly the point. If you are healthy you don't need the healthcare system so you won't be aware of any of the problems that do exist - because we all know there are some. Just not as many as the public thinks.
I think this extends to physician malpractice legislation as well. I’m sure they can find some boomer who retired in 2017 who will say half the stuff I do in the waiting room is not standard of care but like .. there’s no staff and I’d like to see them do better lol
