4 ms·

It's a necessity, a side-product of not having anywhere near enough nurses, assistant staff and doctors in hospitals. They're juggling alarms constantly (which

It's a necessity, a side-product of not having anywhere near enough nurses, assistant staff and doctors in hospitals. They're juggling alarms constantly (which have to blare in a cacophony) and speed from one patient to the next. Ideally you'd have a 1:1 (or better!) assignment between a single patient to a single nurse in critical care, 1:3 for patients that can't move around on their own (and thus need more assistance, even if it's just helping them to eat or go to the loo), and 1:5 to 1:10 for everyone else. The sad reality is that even in Germany, you have care home staff calling in the fire department to assist because there were just three staff in a night shift, having to deal with 170 patients. [1] https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article242110812/Kurioser-Grund-Feuerwehr-Polizei-ruecken-in-Seniorenheim-an.html https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article242110812/Kurioser-G...

ler_ 2y ago
Thank you for bringing that up, understaffing affects everything and harms patients. No set of alarms will ever replace the benefit of having enough people working.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
I don’t disagree but I’m not sure how to make the costs of healthcare work with those ratios
- mschuster91 2y ago
  Get rid of bureaucratic bullshit and you'd get > 250 billion $ a year [1]. Get rid of insurances and other middlemen and you'd get another 450 billion $ a year by going for single-payer [2]. Then, get the homeless enrolled in insurance as well - even if the government pays the premium, every single homeless person costs > 18k a year in ER visits [3], a lot of which could be prevented if these people could go to a doctor before they'd be sick enough to incur serious ER costs. And finally, get as many homeless drug addicts back into some sort of stable housing. A lot of drug usage "on the streets" is self-medication to cope with the immense stress that comes from being homeless. Yes, there will always be a certain percentage of hardcore voluntary homeless people, but that's way better manageable than the status quo. That should be way more than enough to hire enough nurses. [1] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/excess-administrative-costs-burden-u-s-health-care-system/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/excess-administrati... [2] https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/yale-study-more-than-335000-lives-could-have-been-saved-during-pandemic-if-us-had-universal-health-care https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/yale-study-more-than-3350... [3] https://www.newsweek.com/homeless-americans-are-costing-us-millions-each-year-street-medicine-would-help-opinion-1701167 https://www.newsweek.com/homeless-americans-are-costing-us-m...

ler_ 2y ago

Thank you for bringing that up, understaffing affects everything and harms patients. No set of alarms will ever replace the benefit of having enough people working.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

I don’t disagree but I’m not sure how to make the costs of healthcare work with those ratios

mschuster91 2y ago
Get rid of bureaucratic bullshit and you'd get > 250 billion $ a year [1]. Get rid of insurances and other middlemen and you'd get another 450 billion $ a year by going for single-payer [2]. Then, get the homeless enrolled in insurance as well - even if the government pays the premium, every single homeless person costs > 18k a year in ER visits [3], a lot of which could be prevented if these people could go to a doctor before they'd be sick enough to incur serious ER costs. And finally, get as many homeless drug addicts back into some sort of stable housing. A lot of drug usage "on the streets" is self-medication to cope with the immense stress that comes from being homeless. Yes, there will always be a certain percentage of hardcore voluntary homeless people, but that's way better manageable than the status quo. That should be way more than enough to hire enough nurses. [1] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/excess-administrative-costs-burden-u-s-health-care-system/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/excess-administrati... [2] https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/yale-study-more-than-335000-lives-could-have-been-saved-during-pandemic-if-us-had-universal-health-care https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/yale-study-more-than-3350... [3] https://www.newsweek.com/homeless-americans-are-costing-us-millions-each-year-street-medicine-would-help-opinion-1701167 https://www.newsweek.com/homeless-americans-are-costing-us-m...