Jim Bratten
In the latest Congressional virus “relief package” of $484 billion, $75 billion goes for aid to hospitals. The reason hospitals are in dire straights is the fact that they were forbidden to continue their bread-and-butter business in order to handle the predicted onslaught of emergency Wuhan virus cases. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) told them to concentrate on those as a priority.
Surgical procedures deemed “elective” (up to 80% of average hospital revenue) were forbidden as the “pandemic plan” to deal with the Wuhan virus crisis was implemented. As patients became aware of the directive, they hesitated to schedule needed procedures or even make a medical visit for analysis due to fear of contracting the virus. They suddenly were treated as secondary patients by hospital administrators because their cancer procedure or shoulder surgery was classed that way (secondary to Wuhan virus victims) by the CDC.
The “flatten the curve” concept was issued as the primary strategy to, as the media portrayed it, “slow the spread” of the Wuhan flu virus. Its real purpose, however, wasn’t to slow the advance of the virus but to keep hospitals from being overrun with Wuhan virus patients. The White House Coronavirus Task Force was basing this policy, and all its other decisions, on flawed “models” created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. The IHME models, as exposed by independent research (outside the federal government), turned out to be data deficient, based on assumptions.
Even though White House Coronavirus Task Force projections for numbers “infected” and “fatalities” were taken from the IHME models, and therefore vastly overblown, Trump’s Task Force would not deviate from the IHME projections, though those projections repeatedly proved wrong. What the Task Force and many governors have told the American people is that if you catch this virus, you’re dead… untrue. The media carried that false mantra to the extreme, sowing uncertainty and fear.
Hospitals were not faced with unmanageable numbers of virus victims; not even close to capacity in most hospitals in the country. But they are faced with record vacancies and are bleeding money. Their basic, foundational patient base is gone and the “Wuhan rush” never showed. Hospitals are in financial trouble because elective surgeries and other medical procedures that paid the bills weren’t allowed. This happened because the CDC and brilliant “problem solver” state executives told hospital administrators to refuse those procedures or delay them. Health care providers are now devastated by the business they lost, many closing due to massive lack of revenue.
When an entire country’s health care delivery model is tossed overboard because of perceived crisis levels in a few large cities, important segments of our health care system are hollowed out. Hospitals and other providers across the country have laid off or fired thousands of employees, including experienced doctors and nurses.
Wouldn’t it have been wiser, instead of allotting $75 billion in aid to hospitals in the last $484 billion spending spree, to have allowed hospitals to run their own businesses as they deemed best, based on their own experience and ability to deliver competent care? Unhappy patients can affect the future of a substandard hospital, but foolish, halfbaked government mandates can affect the future of any hospital.
It would certainly have been better to toss the IHME projections, can the panic, and tell hospitals the truth: the Wuhan virus survival rate is over 98%.
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Amen.