American hospitals have to operate at near-maximum capacity when it comes to patients and procedures鈥攋ust to remain financially viable.
Now, many hospitals are facing a budget crisis, revealing 鈥渢he extent to which their business model is structured to reward high-cost surgeries over the very type of routine care that COVID-19 is demanding,鈥� argues physician and , the Charles E. and Dale L. Phelps Professor in Public Policy and Health at the 人妻少妇专区.
The pandemic has made clear that a health care system that prioritizes volume鈥攕pecifically of procedures鈥斺�渋s structurally incapable of sustainably responding and adapting to such an unprecedented challenge,鈥� Raz writes in a , published in the newspaper鈥檚 Made by History section.
Financial considerations slowed the decision by many hospitals to postpone elective medical interventions. Raz notes:
In mid-March, a month and a half after the first diagnosis of COVID-19 in the United States, Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams urged specialists to reschedule elective procedures when possible and medically safe. Such a pause promised to free up operating rooms and post-surgical units for COVID-19 patients and to direct limited resources, including personal protective equipment (PPE), to front-line providers.
Yet, initially, this suggestion provoked backlash from powerful groups that represent hospitals and medical colleges, because the revenue from such procedures is critical for their financial survival.
As the country opens back up and procedures are scheduled, she concludes that 鈥渋t is important to consider the often invisible structures of our health-care system, and how we might restructure them to create a more adaptive system less based on volume and the political battles of the 20th century.鈥�
Raz, an expert in public policy and health, is the author of What鈥檚 Wrong with the Poor? Psychiatry, Race and the War on Poverty (University of North Carolina Press, 2013) and The Lobotomy Letters: The Making of American Psychosurgery (人妻少妇专区, 2013). Her third book, (UNC Press), is forthcoming.
- Read the in the Washington Post.
