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This is cool. I frequently find that medical people (at least in America) are intentionally ambivalent towards how much things cost - charitably, for patient ca
by codekansas 5y ago
This is cool. I frequently find that medical people (at least in America) are intentionally ambivalent towards how much things cost - charitably, for patient care at least, you want the highest quality care for everyone, and skimping on cost could compromise someone's health. The idea that something being more expensive makes it more scarce, as obvious as it would seem, is often a secondary consideration.
Example: My wife is in surgery, and has told me how surgical tools often come billed as a set. Rather than being able to bill for a single tool, if an operation requires another duplicate of the same tool the surgeon will often just open an entire new set.
Another example: In college I build a tDCS machine [1] for about $20. I knew a doctor from the VA who was working in the area who showed me one with essentially the same circuit which sold for $80,000 - essentially for the stamp of approval from the FDA to use it in a clinical research setting.
There are reasonable-sounding explanations for both things I guess, but the obvious consequence is that the number of people able to receive care is dramatically lower. I feel like there are probably similar analogies in technology, but maybe they are more easily disrupted because of lower regulatory barriers.
[1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/specialty_areas/brain_stimulation/tdcs.html https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/specialty_areas/b...
- capnahab 5y ago"Example: My wife is in surgery, and has told me how surgical tools often come billed as a set. Rather than being able to bill for a single tool, if an operation requires another duplicate of the same tool the surgeon will often just open an entire new set." That could be because the instrument required has been sterilised as part of a set and is not sterilised individually. This is a common problem in the UK where I work (as a surgeon), - the logistics of individually tracking all single packaged instruments would be unworkable and hugely costly.So they are grouped as a set for a particular operation.
- codekansas 5y agoYeah I think that's why in the US as well, but I think it reflects a lack of sense of urgency for figuring out how to do it more cheaply. Compared to hospitals in Vietnam, for example, where sanitization standards are much lower, they do a lot more creative stuff to save on costs. It leads to worse outcomes, of course, but if they insisted on the highest quality care for everyone then a lot fewer people would get care in the first place
- matjazdrolc 5y agoAre we talking about metal instruments that are later resterilized and reused? How much waste does this create, finnancially and in terms of material?
- kdtop3 5y agoYes, surgical tool sets are often reusable after resterilization. But there is also a large volume of single-use products.