Even A Healthcare Union President Wants Less Patients in the Hospital

NEW YORK (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)


http://observer.com/2015/08/even-a-healthcare-union-president-wants-less-patients-in-the-hospital/

By George Gresham | 08/04/15 7:14am

Too many people are receiving care in hospitals when they do not need to be there. This not only contributes to making our healthcare system the most expensive in the world, it leads to a worse quality of life and poorer health outcomes for patients. Now, some might be surprised to hear me say this. After all, I am the leader of the largest hospital workers’ local union in the country. But I cannot sit silently when I know our current system is resulting in premature deaths and unnecessary suffering, especially in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.

I hear the stories too often, from our members who see the problems on the front lines. The homeless man who comes to the ER over and over because he can’t keep his diabetes under control without a stable place to live. The elderly woman who ends up dying in hospital after a month of painful procedures when what she really wanted was to spend her last days in the comfort of her own home, surrounded by family instead of beeping machines. The asthmatic child who doesn’t have the medication or the tools to manage her disease and so spends her weekends in the hospital instead of playing outside. The man with heart disease who bounces right back to the hospital after being discharged because the pills he was prescribed were too expensive.

The answer is not simply less hospital care, but rather a fundamental shift in the health care delivery paradigm. Instead of incentivizing expensive procedures in hospital settings that only focus on treating disease once patients are already acutely sick, we must increase access to community-based care that emphasizes prevention, education, nutrition and the overall health of the patient.

Our system is good at delivering world-class care to the very ill. That’s why people of means from all over the world come to be treated in U.S. hospitals, especially our teaching hospitals. And our union’s members–from nurses and respiratory therapists to transporters and cleaners – are justifiably proud of their work. We will always need hospitals to deliver trauma care and treat severe disease. But we really have a “sick care” system, not a “health care” system. It is not designed to help people manage chronic disease, prevent illness or support comprehensive well-being. And these failures result in huge waste, estimated at between 21% and 47% of total health care spending. According to a 2012 article by Dr. Donald Berwick in the Journal of the American Medical Association, failure to coordinate care alone is estimated to cost between $25 and $45 billion per year. Overtreatment is estimated to cost $158 to $225 billion a year.

FULL story at link.

George Gresham is president of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, which represents over 400,000 caregivers and is the largest healthcare union in the country.