
How Hospitals Coddle the Rich - millisecond
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/opinion/hospitals-red-blanket-problem.html
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duncan_bayne
"But if we don’t challenge the necessity of luxury services, then we have
accepted that hospitals — and medicine in general — prosper in part because
they cater to the wealthy."

My wife and I paid for private medical care when we had our children. The
result was better care, less stress, and better outcomes for all of us.
Perhaps that was 'luxury' care relative to public healthcare, but it was worth
every cent.

I don't quite get the thrust of the article.

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DanBC
(You don't say what country you're in.)

Before you paid for private healthcare: what information on patient safety did
you look at?

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duncan_bayne
To be honest I don't remember the details. The key differentiators that I
remember were:

* longer stay in the private hospital * private rooms * better ratio of staff to patients * easier access to useful services (physio, breast feeding consultants, etc.) * specialist assistance like breastfeeding courses and the like, if needed

As it happens our first child was born by emergency C-section after a nasty
fall and partial placenta abrupta, so we really tested them :) Everything went
very well.

I was suprised by the _second_ birth, because that was a 'normal' C-section.
People were laughing, chatting etc. and it was a much less "game face ON"
environment than the first. I'd probably have noticed the tension more if I'd
been paying more attention to anything other than my wife at the time.

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notacoward
The biggest danger I see is not of doctors or nurses _intentionally_
shortchanging other patients, but of being less immediately available when
something unexpected happens. Seconds can count. If somebody is on that luxury
top floor answering extra questions for a VIP patient, and has to hustle
downstairs to handle an emerging crisis, they haven't exactly done anything
wrong but the difference in outcomes might still be huge.

