Many laud England’s health care system as one of the models that could work in U.S. A recent L.A. Times Article shows Britain’s National Health Service (which already imposes high taxes on its populous) is suffering from a $1 billion+ budget deficit and is having to lay off thousands of workers. With an already desperate shortage of nurses, conditions in many of these hospitals is pretty awful …something that might turn your stomach…especially in a country which is fast becoming the financial hub of the world (free enterprise does exist in some aspects of the culture). Because there aren’t enough people to keep these hospitals sanitary there are an estimated “6,300 hospital-based ’superbug’ infections at [Britain’s] government-run facilities. Staphylococcus, or staph, infections (which have gotten plenty of press in the U.S. lately) and C. difficile are quite deadly and the latest infestations in 3 hospitals in south-central England have killed 90 people. 90 people.
Here’s another quote: “Beds were jammed within a foot of each other, and the administration was preoccupied with meeting budget targets, patients reported. The daughter of an 87-year-old war veteran who died after being left with soiled sheets and bedsores said her father told her: ‘What have I done to deserve a place like this? They were taking three hours to change his sheets,’ Jackie Nixon, whose complaints helped initiate the commission review, said in a telephone interview” Jackie Nixon’s father died from a C. difficile infection after undergoing successful bowel surgery. He had to go to the bathroom (it was bowel surgery), the overextended nursing staff didn’t have time to bring him a bedpan…so they told him to just go in the bed. Having no choice, he did so…and 2 hours later they still hadn’t gotten around to changing the soiled sheets.
Is all of England like this? Probably not…and certainly bacterial infections affect well-funded private hospitals as well. However, 90 deaths from 3 hospitals tied directly to infections which resulted from unsanitary conditions is certainly enough to give one pause before endorsing a model that will have to lay off thousands more after an already critical shortage of health care professionals has caused unnecessary deaths…
Here’s another quote: “Beds were jammed within a foot of each other, and the administration was preoccupied with meeting budget targets, patients reported. The daughter of an 87-year-old war veteran who died after being left with soiled sheets and bedsores said her father told her: ‘What have I done to deserve a place like this? They were taking three hours to change his sheets,’ Jackie Nixon, whose complaints helped initiate the commission review, said in a telephone interview” Jackie Nixon’s father died from a C. difficile infection after undergoing successful bowel surgery. He had to go to the bathroom (it was bowel surgery), the overextended nursing staff didn’t have time to bring him a bedpan…so they told him to just go in the bed. Having no choice, he did so…and 2 hours later they still hadn’t gotten around to changing the soiled sheets.
Is all of England like this? Probably not…and certainly bacterial infections affect well-funded private hospitals as well. However, 90 deaths from 3 hospitals tied directly to infections which resulted from unsanitary conditions is certainly enough to give one pause before endorsing a model that will have to lay off thousands more after an already critical shortage of health care professionals has caused unnecessary deaths…
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