Battling Healthcare

The US Department of Health and Human Services / Department of Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) provides a website called Hospital Compare that allows potential patients to size up a hospital before they are admitted. Need to know how many heart surgeries are successful at your local hospital? Need to know its mortality rate? The information can be found at www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.

And now, a new addition to the website will make this website even more valuable to those of us who do our due diligence. I love this!

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My friend Angela is in the middle of a debacle that probably should surprise no one, but is just as difficult and frustrating all the same.

Several years ago she had surgery. Not long afterwards, she had new symptoms that made her surgeon take pause… eventually it was discovered that the cause of the problem was a mesh fabric used as a part of the surgery. It wasn’t left there by mistake; it was part of the surgery. It was supposed to be there. It was manufactured to be left in someone’s body. It was new to the market, and there’s where part of the problem is. It’s called Mentor’s OB Tape.

Follow up surgery has not rectified the problem. The most recent theory is that the mesh has migrated to other areas of Angela’s body. She is left with problems and pain. The next step is probably another surgery — seek and remove — find those other pieces of mesh in other places, dig them out, replace them, sew them into place. Bloody, messy, ugly, horrible.

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A Canadian study recently released, and reported in the New York Times, gives us one more reason to ask our doctors questions, and to insist on second opinions.

Two people, one woman, one man, both 67 years old, and with equally ugly osteoarthritis were sent to 67 doctors. Among them were 29 orthopedic doctors and 38 family physicians. The patients were coached on how to present their symptoms so each doctor visit would be consistent. After examination, each patient asked the doctors whether they would need a knee replacement.

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