Chronic Rants

I emailed my doctor a reminder that I needed to have some blood tests repeated. When I first started going to that office, I lived less than a mile away. On days that I felt well enough, I walked there. Now I live a 30 minute drive from there, so it’s harder to get blood work done. That’s why I figured this was good timing; I had an appointment the next day with another practitioner in the office. I wasn’t prepared for my doctor’s response. It basically said, the order is in the system but they no longer have a phlebotomy lab, and it listed some other places I could get my blood draw.

WTF?

The next day, I saw the other practitioner and I asked about the loss of the phlebotomy lab. Was it temporary? Why on earth would a medical facility no longer have the ability to draw blood?

Her answer was simple and terrible: it was not considered cost effective by the hospital that was now in charge.

Several years ago, this independent facility became part of a local hospital system. This happens a lot in my area. For me this was good in some ways, because now they took my insurance, while they had not previously. On the other hand, the doctors lost some of their independence. Where before they referred patients to the best doctors they knew of, now there was pressure for all referrals to be within the hospital network. Not exactly putting patients first, were they?

This year, that hospital joined another hospital network. The hospitals are now separate, but connected. The new hospital network is bigger, though, and has more power. And the new network says that the phlebotomy lab is not cost effective. It’s not worth the money, even though it’s important for the care of the patients. How does that make sense? Isn’t the entire point of this building to provide care to patients? Apparently not.

My doctor had giving me a list of alternate places to get my blood drawn. Unfortunately, it was an additional two weeks before I was able to get to any of them. I have a car and am often mobile. Several years ago when I could barely leave the house more than two or three times each week, this would have cost me more. Some people don’t have cars, which will make many of these locations harder to access. For some, it will be impossible. What will happen to them? What will happen to all of us, as hospitals continue to make decisions that favor the bottom line over patients?

Because that wasn’t the only bad news. My practitioner also told me that the hospital is considering moving the entire staff of that building. The new location would be nearby, but due to traffic, it would be much harder for me to access. Due to less public transportation access, it would be impossible for others to access. The reason they are considering this is because it’s cheaper. The office has occupied this building for many years. However, it is now considered prime real estate, and the hospital would rather get more money by moving everyone. Maybe this will work out ok, but I do wonder what will happen to the many patients who rely on these excellent doctors and who can not get to the new place. Have they been taken into consideration at all?

This situation isn’t unique to this one office. We are seeing it more and more. There are cutbacks in all kinds of areas. What will be next? And what kind of impact will it have?

Have you experienced medical facilities prioritizing money over patients? Please share it in the comments.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 29th, 2019 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Healthcare, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.