How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Healthcare System

Welcome to my How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Healthcare System book summary!

“Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in this country.” (p. 165)

“As clinicians, we knew the doctors who wouldn’t be allowed to touch our family members, but we were not at liberty to discuss this hard truth with others in the community.” (p. 166).

One-Sentence-Summary: How to be an active participant in your medical care to reduce errors on the part of medical staff and increase your chance of a successful recovery.

I read this book becuase I know most humans are just average. Doctors are no different. But, how can I tell I have a good doctor? Well, I’ve assembled a list of questions at the end of my review for your reference to ask your current or future doctor. Besides that, it’s hard. “Oh, all of our doctors are top quality.” Bullshit. And this book prooved my initial assumption.

booboo real-time book rating: ★★★★★ (percentage of books with this rating: 34%)

Finding a Quality Hospital

There are all kinds of data out there that will let you know how your hospital fares as compared to the national benchmarks. National benchmarks are standards that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have set for issues like infection rates and never events. A never event is something that CMS believes should never occur under any situation in health care. There is a wealth of data located at Data.Medicare.gov. This is best accessed from a personal computer or laptop. Simply click on the https://www.medicare.gov/care-compare/ button below the word “search” to get started.

A good question for you to ask when you are inquiring about a hospital is, “Do you have a rapid response program”? Or in smaller hospitals that may not be able to support a rapid response nurse position, you might ask, “What is your process to intervene before a patient’s condition deteriorates such as if their vital signs become unstable and a patient’s condition looks worse”?

Choosing a Surgeon

The first thing you should ask is how many times your surgeon has performed this surgery. You don’t want to be any surgeon’s first patient, right? Then ask if any of the surgeon’s patients had complications and if so, has death ever occurred from this type of surgery? Don’t be surprised if they say yes. Many good surgeons have lost people because they came to the hospital in critical condition and the surgeon was trying to save their lives.

Ask your surgeon when you will be on his surgery schedule. Ideally, you want to be the first case of the day.

Another question you should ask is how often the surgeon is on call. Being on call means that the surgeon is covering for himself or his practice and may be getting woken up frequently

Ask your surgeon: “Will you be doing the surgery on me?”

When You Have Problems with Hospital Staff

If you are having a problem with an individual at a hospital, ask to speak to the unit manager during the day or the nursing supervisor after hours.

“In the past if you had a bad experience while being a patient, you had no way to share that information to help the hospital or care provider improve. The government recognized this and put in place surveys called the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores. These are mandatory for all hospitals and affect their financial reimbursement. More importantly, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) uses this information to rate hospitals, which they then publish on their website.” (p. 150)

“If doctor is not listening to you: If you’re in the hospital, you can always find the Nurse Manager of the unit you or your loved one is on during the day. If the situation occurs during off hours, you can find the Charge Nurse or have the Nursing Supervisor called to the floor..Due to the uptick in consumerism in health care many hospitals have added an additional position called the Chief Client Experience Officer.” (p. 153)

Chief Nursing Officer (CNO)

Did you know I’m an author? I wrote four books on real estate investing, travel, and language learning.

While in the Hospital

One of the biggest steps you can take to ensure your safety from these infections is to make sure anyone who comes in contact with you—doctor, nurse, physical therapist, occupational therapist, even your family members— washes their hands for 20 seconds or more before coming near you. This precaution has been proven to cut down the infection rate.

5% of patients are given wrong medication, make sure the nurse scans the medication and your wristband to ensure it’s accurate and their are no warnings or reacitions.

Other Medical Care Recommendations

If you have a surgical procedure under anesthesia, you should ask how you did with the anesthesia.

The book recommends you keep an electronic medical record (EMR) for life becuase of lack of coordenation between hospitals and doctors.

Ask if the surgery can be done at an ambulatory surgical center (ASC) which will cost less and it a good idea if you do not have any comorbidities. It used to be only certain surgeries could be done at an ASC, but with the advances in modern medicine, that list is expanding. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has a list of Inpatient Only Procedures. These are procedures that must be done at the hospital. You can find this list on the CMS website.

A quick way to tell if you have a brand name drug or a generic drug is by looking at the drug name. If it starts with a capital letter it’s a brand name drug. If it starts with a lowercase letter it’s a generic drug.

This blog will contain both my summary and review of the book How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Health Care System.

Paying the Hospital Bill

You can negotiate a payment plan with the hospital directly interest free.

Find the fair price to pay for medical procedures: healthcarebluebook.com/ui/consumerfront

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reports on their website: “hospitals’ standard charges, including the rates they negotiate with insurance companies and the discounted price a hospital is willing to accept directly from a patient if paid in cash, must be publicly available, free of charge, and presented in a consumer-friendly display.”

You are reading my book review and summary by Dr. David Wilcox. Be sure to check out my digital bookshelf for 100+ book summaries.

Organic vs. GMO Food

“..the best way to tell how the product was grown is through the use of Price Lookup Codes (PLU) attached to the item. Four-digit codes mean the food was conventionally grown. Five-digit codes starting with the number eight mean the food item is a GMO product. Fivedigit codes starting with the number nine mean the food item is organically grown. As an example, a universal code for bananas is 4011, meaning it is conventionally grown. If the PLU were 84011, this would mean it is a GMO product, and if it were 94011, it is organically grown.” (p. 162-3)

Thanks for visiting and thanks to Dr. David Wilcox for writing How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Health Care System!

“..because research shows that a high heart rate, while you are sitting or lying down, increased amounts of sleeping, and decreased physical activity, are indicators for the flu, which are also symptoms of COVID-19.” (p. 117) That’s because covid is the flu.