Monday, February 16, 2009

Why Community Hospitals Are Dying

... because when you're in Florida and try to get an right hip x-ray on your mother, community hospitals like Englewood Community Hospital (part of the HCA Health Care) says they have to verify that the doctor ordering the study (my mother's doctor in Illinois) really exists before the test can be performed, and that will take two or three days.

Funny, the guys across the street, Radiology Associates of Venice and Englewood, a free-standing radiology group, could do it the same day - happily.

Thank goodness the helpful receptionist at Englewood Community Hospital gave us the name of these guys - at least she could see the forest from the trees.

God bless the free-market health care system. Do we really want to see this go away?

-Wes

3 comments:

OHN said...

Yeah...and I bet if the hospital administration finds out she was referring patients outside the hospital, she will be standing in the unemployment line. (for doing the right thing FOR THE PATIENT!--the one the hospital is supposed to care about.)

ems12lead said...

That's scary, Dr. Wes! My parents live in Venice.

Anonymous said...

Englewood does not have the capability of looking up your mother's doctor on the IL medical board site? I was just able to view your middle name :-)
CardioNP