In the Hospital

One of the many things that irks me about our healthcare system is the fact that it is so unnecessarily complicated. If you become ill and need to spend the night in the hospital, the last thing you should have to worry about is your admission status. However, you do need to worry about it.

Have you ever heard the saying, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you?” It’s sometimes used to glorify the “ignorance is bliss” mentality. The idea is that we can’t worry about issues if we don’t know about them. It is also used to justify lying by omission, the act of leaving out “small details” to

I live in a metropolitan area with several renowned academic medical centers and high-quality community hospitals. When my mother was diagnosed with leukemia, she received top-notch care at a local university hospital’s cancer center. My father had open heart surgery at a facility with an award-winning cardiac surgery department. There’s a peace of mind associated

My father was college-educated and had no obvious difficulty understanding medical advice in his earlier years. However, when he began to develop dementia there was a very noticeable change in his intellectual capacity. When I accompanied him to doctor visits, I noticed that not only did he struggle with understanding his instructions, he was also

I had surgery in May 2016. Within 60 days I received and paid bills for the services provided by the four physicians involved in my care– the Emergency Room physician, the radiologist, the anesthesiologist, and the surgeon. 8 months after the surgery, I received my first bill from the hospital. The charges totaled $8400. According

During one of my dad’s more frustrating hospitalizations my sisters and I were having a very difficult time communicating with the doctors. We provided them with numerous examples of his confusion and disorganized thoughts. We had significant concerns about his mental status and ability to care for himself yet the doctors kept telling us he

My father had several chronic health conditions and was cared for by multiple physicians. In addition to his primary care physician, he saw a cardiologist for hypertension and heart disease, a nephrologist for end stage renal disease, a neurologist for dementia and unexplained weakness, and a psychiatrist for depression. When hospitalized, he was typically cared for

As discussed in last week’s blog post, the family meeting is an essential tool for communicating with members of the health care team when you or your loved one is hospitalized. I have participated in numerous family meetings as part of the medical team, but I have also been on the other side of the table

There’s nothing more frightening than having a loved one in the hospital and feeling clueless. You keep missing the attending physician despite arriving early in the morning. The nurse is so busy caring for other patients that she doesn’t have much time to talk to you and hasn’t been able to adequately review the chart.

When I began practicing as a hospitalist physician my patients’ family members would routinely ask, “When is her regular doctor coming to see her?” They were happy with the care I provided but wanted to see a familiar face. Today, almost thirteen years later, I am asked this question very rarely. Due to numerous changes