The Future of Medicine

“I can show you evidence of my yacht”

[DGlaucomflecken]

Everybody welcome Barty Banks to the Glaucomflecken cinematic universe! He’s awful!

[ninjason]

As an ER physician this is the definition of "the truth hurts".

[pinkprincessinthecity]

"One word ...metrics."
Just hearing that sent shivers down my spine, for Barty Banks is one horrible despicable villain.
Business people have no business making decisions when it comes to patient care in the healthcare system.

Metrics is essentially the reasons why so many patients that are legitimately in need of care, get denied.

Being high risk, low outcome, questionable circumstance, etc., ...all of that could lead to a patient being denied care or being transferred around, so they can be someone else's problem.
Might as well tell patients that if they are not at the epitomy of good health, be prepared NOT to recieve care, for a hospital would not want their precious metrics to be trashed.

[PradeepChakravarthyB]

You do more public service than most. Your subtle satire while taking a stab at the burning issues in current medicine is nothing but genius. Great going, Will!

[silver]

Technically it’s the present state of medicine too, not just the future. The future is now! 😅 This literally caused me to lose my job for “performance issues” less than 2 months after having an annual performance evaluation that reflected above-average performance & noted consistent signs of ongoing improvement.

[KristenRowenPliske]

I’ve been an RN for almost 30yrs. The best hospital I ever worked at was one owned by Sisters of Charity. They sold it to CHRISTUS, which made some changes but weren’t so horrible. But when I moved to an HCA hospital…hoo boy. My mom recently retired from that same CHRISTUS hospital-now owned by an even bigger corporation.
We both agree that working at a corporate hospital whose focus is money first, then patients, then staff (although they do like to pretend otherwise) is the worst thing ever. I have never believed more strongly that capitalism should NOT be running healthcare.

[maryellencone]

I am a CPA...and daughter of a physician. Keep those GREASY business people out of medicine.

[vanntooot]

The way you depict we millenial physicians' bleak, nihilistic, and abjectly futile outlook on healthcare is just *chef's kiss*

[Gehe]

"If you can't afford to get hurt or sick, don't." This is the mantra US healthcare works around. Which is interesting because ever since the 50s US economy been revolving around people getting and doing things they can't afford with money they don't have.

[pompeii]

On one of the early seasons of House MD, they had a rich guy come in and donate $100 000 to the hospital in exchange for a position at the head of the board of directors. And the entire board basically just said, "well, seems like a small price to pay!" and then everyone was so shocked when the guy started fucking everything up, insisted on running the hospital "like a business", and took complete control by firing every board member who disagreed with him.

It's just weird because the whole time, I was thinking how it was obviously unrealistic and made no fucking sense from the start. You can't just BUY a job without having any qualifications and have people go along with it. At the very least, it would be under the table because it's clearly a bribe and not a legitimate hire.

This just made me think of that.

[deityaura]

I worked for one political campaign in my life that seemed like the easiest thing on earth. Just a nurses union pushing for safe guidelines on how many patients can be assigned to a nurse, already done in California which saved people money in the end. We were winning by a landslide until a couple of weeks before voting where private hospital CEOs dumped $13, 000, 000 into ads that took our "nurses say yes on Question one" and made it "Nurses say no on question one" then we lost through pure confusion and advertisement tactics. Taught me what a joke voting and healthcare ethics was in the US

[Hilly_LittleFeatheryCorner]

I've been playing Project Hospital lately and there was this quest called "Earn profit for (X) days". I was having difficulty the first round so I looked up for some advice for this task. Apparently the solution was "get rid/close all ER and ICU departments to focus on surgery departments". 😷

[mojo]

Yeah, worked at a hospital like that. They rationed alcohol wipes and turned the lights off at 9:00 p.m. When I complained about the safety issue of not being able to see when preparing meds (did not have pixis in those days) and increased potential for infection I received a shrug. All the while the Administrator was earning 6 figures. Had to bring a flashlight and buy my own alcohol wipes. They moved CABG patients from the ICU to a step down unit after 24 hours with PA and A lines and chest tubes where the nurse to patient ratio was 6:1 and none of the nurses, except myself, had ICU experience. Even with my experience and despite empatically telling my day 2 post op CABG patient not to get out of bed for any reason without me and that I would be watching him closely he almost immediately got up and pulled his chest tube out. I just happened to be close enough to hear an odd rhythmic whoosing noise so I checked. When I called the surgeon I was berated for not watching the patient closely enough. I finally said "who of my 5 other patients would you suggest I neglect to stay at your patients bedside?" You know how that went over with a surgeon in a private hospital... We nurses reported them to the union who did absolutely nothing about that or any other safety issue. I requested to be withdrawn from the union and was told once you sign on you can't sign out. The only way out was to quit so I did and traveled 35 mins to get to another hospital that was a nonprofit, not unionized and patient care was more of the focus. The hosp I left changed Administrators about every 3 years. They collect their high salaries while raping the institution and then move on to the next small hospital.

[retropulpmonkey]

And to their delight, each healthcare worker they drive away increases the scarcity of their 'product' so that they can further increase prices and profit, and makes it easier to withhold treatment from the underprivileged.

[darklucida]

I left corporate pharmacy because of those unrealistic metrics which can use as leverage to fire you whenever they want. Work at an independent that is lower pay but at least I not on antidepressants.

[Crismodin]

"It's not supposed to make money" - For some reason everyone skips over that fact that healthcare shouldn't revolve around making money.

I have nothing nice to say about our current healthcare system in the USA.

[kolliwanne]

Never understood why so many of my fellow medical staff keep their complience up. We often get told that we "cant just strike and not work, think of the patients".
I see it this way: "We can strike, we can set a price and yes exactly - Think of the patients."
I wonder how quick our politicians will suddenly move their asses if they realize that entire hospitals would threat to lay down their work.

[EndLch]

In Germany there is a worrying phenomenon going on right now with more and more ophthalmology clinics being taken over by (international) investors, which results in more treatments being done than are necessary. Additionally, it is very difficult to find out whether the clinic you want to go to is run by an investment company. Hopefully we'll manage to stop this and make it very transparent, which clinics are profit machines. Making medical decisions based on financial gain is just wrong.

[TheMedengineer]

Got to love having both "be fired for any reason" clauses and non-compete agreements in your contract. Especially as a pathologist.

[scottbandy]

Who would have thought that the most scathing and critically accurate representation of our messed up healthcare system would come from a YouTube celebrity. (A much loved and well respected celebrity, I might add 😉). Keep up the amazing, and humorous social commentary, Doc!