The Hospital Story

I sat and for a brief time last night....watched 'Hard But Fair' on ARD (public-TV in Germany).  The topic was not Erdogan or Turkey.  I know....everyone is hyped up but they went to a topic that is starting to be recognized more and more as a major issue.....hospitals in trouble.  I should note....I watched only about 25 minutes of this forum.

Focus laid out much of the conversation this morning.

Over the past decade, the public hospitals in Germany are under enormous pressure because there's just no more money to run these operations at the way that the public expects.

Nurses have to cover more patients....meaning that instead of monitoring eight patients....you monitor fourteen patients.  In a more stressful environment....you do tidy-up work less, and sanitation become more and more a problem....so some bacteria starts to move around, and infections rise.

Doctors are the ultimate authority in preventing all of this, but if you don't have adequate people to clean up things....it's just accepted.

The minister from the government in charge of public health in Germany did some defense of his position.  But all of this comes down to the fact that you can't raise the medical cost on the public.  So you start cutting services and corners.

A logical guy could sit and view this growing trend, and just start to think....you really don't want to check into some hospital for any reason at all....because you'd wake up in some recovery phase days later, and get an infection from your buddy in the room, or from the last guy who was in the bed.

All of this is a sign that the system has maxed out, and cannot be fixed without more funding (which simply doesn't exist).  Quality in healthcare?  You could have a fantastic system in place which you'd like to brag about....but if your odds of getting a serious infection and dying from something that revolves around clean-up operations is like one in ten-thousand....it's a situation that you'd prefer to avoid.  Or being the guy who has a leg removed six weeks after your original operation....simply because infection set in after your simple knee operation, and the hospital could have prevented the infection....will get you pretty angry.