Hospitals — once synonymous with a place to go when you are really sick — is now the last place you want to be unless it is prescheduled surgery with a doctor you trust. If you are elderly and/or on Medicare, you are treated as a money machine, not a person.
Here’s how it works: Depending on how sick you are is how quickly you are seen. If you have an HMO or PPO assigned to your Medicare plan then everything is a predetermined price. If you only have a Medicare card, then the patient becomes an ATM. This means that the nurses and techs will run as many tests as reasonably possible (that Medicare pays). The doctor will review the chart for a “diagnosis” which, in my experience, is usually “inconclusive.”
The first time you go to the ER chances are you will go home after inconclusive tests, but should you go back within 72 hours the hospital will admit you. This is because the insurance companies won’t pay for a second ER visit without a diagnosis and admittance.
Now, here is what is very important: You cannot let your elderly loved one stay in the emergency room by themselves, and here is why — the administration will have them sign consent forms for numerous tests that do nothing except take up time. Secondly, they are treated horribly.
I took my 90-plus-year-old Dad to his HMO doc. He was having balance issues with symptoms that might or might not be a stroke. We rushed to the ER and sat in highly uncomfortable chairs with all types of sick people. After two hours they called Dad into a “room.”
The medical techs hook him up to a glucose drip and leave the room. For the next three hours he is taken from one machine to another for test after test. At the end of this interminable afternoon we received an “inconclusive diagnosis” and he was allowed to go home.
Two nights later the same symptoms occurred; my brother calls 911 and Dad is whisked off to the hospital. I follow the ambulance to the same hospital where we had been two days earlier. I stay with my father. They finally move him to an ER room and begin to do the exact same tests they did 48 hours earlier. I question every one. It is now 1 a.m. I find blankets and sleep on the floor next to Dad’s bed because they are going admit him.
Remember, if they don’t admit him the hospital won’t be paid. In every case, with every test, the results were the same as the ones 48 hours earlier, but now the diagnosis is not inconclusive — it is “we need more tests and observation.” After two days they allowed him to leave with the diagnosis of dehydration/ In other words, he needs to drink more water.
Bottom line: If you have an elderly parent or grandparent do not trust the hospital. When either of my parents stay in the hospital overnight we hire a “babysitter.” Yes, it costs money, but your loved one doesn’t wake up to an empty room trying to figure out where he or she is. Further, I check the chart constantly to see what medications are being prescribed and what diagnosis has been given, if any.
And remember, the squeaky wheel gets the oil so ask questions and demand answers.
Frances Reaves, Esq., a graduate of the University of Miami Law School, spent 10 years as a litigator/lobbyist. Today, she Is an accomplished business woman who, when her parents could no longer take care of themselves, learned the ins and outs of senior care (or the lack thereof). She founded Parent Your Parents to assist seniors and their children through the myriad pitfalls and options of “senior care” in the 21st Century. If you have any questions or comments contact Frances at hfrancesr@parentyourparents.com.
