In the late 1970s, I started observing a trend in hospitals to cut back on nursing staff, including nurses aids and orderlies. I expressed my concern about it and was ignored, naturally. Shortly before the 80s, I observed that LPNs were being used to do nurses aides duties as well as their own – which was a slap in the face for the LPN.
I expressed concern over this also, citing the very real possibility of LPNs becoming a vanishing breed. Naturally, I was ignored.
By the 80s, RNs were doing both LPN and Nursing Aids work as the amount of LPNs graduating nursing school had dropped. After all, why go to school, learn nursing and then be regulated to bed pan and sheet changing? Plus, it had become the ‘in’ career to become lawyers – more money with less work and less danger. During this time, local schools started churning out Nurses Aides by the ton, which I felt would glut the market.
It did. Just about the time Nurses Aides were pouring out of everyone’s ears, the Hospitals went to being profit oriented and private. They cut the Nurses Aides and hired more RNs, who, depending on their education (2 or 4 year graduates), got to make up the difference.
I warned them again that Bad Things Were Going To Happen, and they scoffed at me. During this whole time, the cost of medical care in the hospitals started soaring to previously unknown heights. Hospital administration became a major business.
*Example: 1970, the local hospital administrator made approximately 60,000 a year, with medical, and retirement. A semiprivate room cost $50 a day.
1999, the administrator makes roughly $2 to $300,000 a year, has major stock options, a guaranteed 5% yearly bonus, his home paid for, his moving expenses paid for, his children’s privet school tuition paid for, a company car, 4 weeks vacation, business expense account – and it is a big one --, plus if terminated before the end of his contract, he gets a guaranteed $1,000,000!
A private room (there are no semiprivate anymore) is $300 a day and rising. NOTE: The hospital now takes more patients than before, yet in comparison to the ratio of patients to staff from 1970, has 50% less staff.*
According to the latest news report, due to inadequate staffing of aides and nurses, 98,000 people die in hospitals a year from errors! In some instances, housecleaning staff have been pressed into service to tend patients!! Nurses have found themselves over worked, forced into mandatory over time, and frequently required to do procedures they are not trained to do!
Vindication is not all that sweet when I can’t go back to the people I warned about all of this and scream I told you so !! in their faces.
When a hospital goes private and turns into a profit making machine, people suffer because in order to keep the profit high, costs get cut. I’ve been trying for ages to get a ceiling cap put on all medical lawsuits because it all works like a set of dominos.
You sue the Dr, who is human and makes a genuine error = the jury of your peers awards you a couple of million for a lost toe = the Dr.s malpractice goes up = he increases his rates = he charges your insurance more = you insurance rates go up.
It doesn’t stop there. You loose the toe in the hospital from some genuine error also of theirs = you sue the hospital = your jury of peers gives you a few million = the hospitals malpractice rate goes up = the hospital increases the cost of care = they bill your insurance more = your insurance bills you more. Now the hospital tags on administrative perks and costs plus strives for a profit picture to keep the stock holders happy = you loose!
The same thing happens with drug companies and medical equipment makers. You still loose.
Congress has made only the barest of considerations and suits still flood the courts.
A challenge: Find some doctor in your town who has been in practice at least 4 years who has not been sued!
There are something like 250 doctors in my town and all have had at least one malpractice suite! Does that mean all are bumbling clods? The hospital is almost always in court over some lawsuit.
Now, with the reduced staff, I expect it will be in court even more, along with many, many others.
Poor medical care equals lawsuits so how does cutting back on the nursing staff equal a higher profit for the hospital if patients are suing the hospital because of inadequate care? I figure something like this is what has caused the potential shutdown of those two long term and major hospitals in West Palm Beach. They have the population there to support both hospitals, but I figure they spent too much on profit pictures, lawsuits, insurance, administration and having to pay inflated equipment costs. (See malpractice suits above.)
I told them so! I raised the flag of dire warning! I screamed from the mainmast that there were dangerous shoals ahead! I pointed out the turbulence in their paths – and they ignored me.
I am vindicated, but it’s no fun.
I think I know how to fix it, but they still won’t listen to me.
It is a bad thing when medical services become private, profit oriented businesses. That indicates that life becomes a commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder.