Navigating a Hospital Stay, Are You Getting the Help You Need?

Are you getting the help you need?  Navigating our health care system is, let's just say, nearly impossible.   Many people, especially older adults, don't even know if they are getting all the help they need or is available before, during or after a hospitalization.  Why is this such a well kept secret in our health care system?

Seems to me that the more knowledge and assistance you give someone the more likely it will be that they do not end up right back in the emergency room, constantly repeating the near same scenario over and over again.  It does not take a degree in economics to see that the system would be able to keep costs down considerably by giving more priority to this very simple element of health care.  Instead this system leads you to think that it is complete ignorance on our part that keeps costs so high when it appears to me that there is just entirely too many special interests involved in the treatment of sick people.

Every time that I experience, first hand, just how difficult moving through the labyrinth of our health care system is, I am left to wonder how in the world do families that do not have a medical professional as part of their family ever get anywhere.  The education of people should be of top priority, especially during a hospitalization, yet it always feels like the patient and family are left in the dark.   WHY?

As I write, my father lies in a hospital slowly recovering from a bowel obstruction. This is the 4th, yeah that is right, the 4th hospital that he has been over the last month.   Due to preexisting difficulties with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the proper treatment for the bowel obstruction was delayed for far too long.  We started the first week at a local community hospital that either was not permitted to refer us to a larger hospital or just simply did not consider it.  Had it not been because of persistence of the family and a family member with a medical education, my father probably would not be with us at all.  After requesting that he be transferred to a larger teaching hospital with the ability to give him the help he needed we were told by the physician that he feels that would be the best plan and my father was moved within hours and just hours after being admitted to that larger facility with more advanced technology he received the surgery he needed.  He remained at this hospital for three weeks making slow improvements everyday with a few set backs.  He was finally strong enough to be transferred to a rehabilitation hospital at which he stayed for all of 12 hours before they sent him to yet another local community hospital because his oxygen levels were low.

The frustration the I feel about the systems within healthcare are mind blowing.  Many things run through my mind in the care of my father.

1. Why did the rehabilitation hospital not call a family member when his oxygen levels became low? To at least give us the option to say: "Please send him back to the facility he just came from".
2. Why did the current hospital that he is in right now not contact the previous hospital that he just spent 3 weeks at to obtain his records?
3. Did my father miss doses of his medications when he transferred from one facility to the next?  This very fact alone may have been what caused his oxygen levels to drop...
4. Where is he going to go from here?

The common denominator in every question that goes through my head is communication and why is it so poor in our healthcare system?  In this day and age there is no excuse for it!  If I can know with in seconds what my cousin on the other side of the country is eating for dinner right now and even see pictures of it through social media then we should be able to send communications just as quickly about things that truly matter in the care of a persons life.

Not only would some real attention to this aspect of healthcare improve the continuity of a patients' care but it would also help to keep the cost of health care down.  Blood test results, x-ray reports, CT scan reports, MRI reports, medication records, patient allergies, assessments, therapy notes, specialists reports, etc. all at your fingertips thus preventing unnecessary repeat testing.

I spend a portion of each day talking to someone at the hospital, whichever one he may be in, about the care of my father.  Whether it be his social worker, care coordinator, nurse, surgeon or physician I am constantly seeking information about what they are doing to help my father,  what the next steps are going to be and what he needs to be doing to get there.  If I would not be pursuing the information, we would be in the dark.  I hate the dark, don't you!

Learning how to navigate our health care system is essential to Aging with Ease!