To make a long story short, my grandmother, who is 88 years old, went into the hospital last month for pain caused by what turned out to be a blood infection. She’s on antibiotics, and is in ‘rehab’ (a nursing home) getting care and doing physical therapy to get mobile again so she can go home, after laying in a hospital bed for 10 or so days.
She wants to go home. She and my grandfather are (well, were) independent; at 88 and 91 still doing everything on their own. It’s probable that grandma won’t recover from this. When she gets off her antibiotics in a few weeks, if the infection hasn’t been licked, well . . . not to be morbid, and who knows what will happen, but the point is, we’re definitely looking at end-of-life care here, not a short stay in the hospital followed by a full recovery to 100% functionality.
Anyway, she wants to go home. For the past two weeks she’s repeated that over and over, directly and indirectly. She’s diligent about her PT, doing her exercises, eating food, and basically doing everything she can to get out of the nursing home and back to her home. I basically see it as her wanting to be able to live her last days, however many there are, in her own home, and not in a shitty nursing facility (not a knock on all nursing facilities, but the one she’s in leaves some things to be desired).
But, apparently, medicare won’t pay for certain things she’s getting (like her drugs) if she goes home.
Let me say that again. If she is taking up a hospital bed, eating hospital food, and costing a ton of money, medicare pays for it. If she goes home, medicare stops covering the drugs and certain other things that it pays for if she’s in an inpatient facility.
FUCK THAT!
Tonight I had to talk with my mom on the phone and listen to her cry, that her mom just wanted to get home (read: get home before she dies), and she was going to try to figure out a way to try to make that happen, but this financial issue that seems more about control and funneling money to the hospital than it does about patient care, or frugality, is part of what is in the way.
The past month has opened my eyes dramatically to ways in which the medical system is flawed and even hostile towards patients. There is too much money involved, and too little care. I fear for the time I have to go to the hospital for anything; I’m learning to expect my needs, comfort, and general mental well-being to always take second fiddle to bureaucracy, payment schemes, and doctors/staff who are transitory, under-informed, overworked, and are mechanical in their performance of their duties with little to no bedside manner, or long-term interest in the patient.
Hope I die before I get old.