Healthcare is really business care

rearviewmirror, BSN, RN · Aug 27, 2015

I cannot agree more with what you said. It's a very dysfunctional system and to be honest I don't even know how to explain to other people about how ridiculous this system is. Its disastrous when you let suits and heels run the decision making for people who work at the bedside, it's as ridiculous as a priest running an abortion clinic. And then there is the hcaps that add spice to this disaster.

I like yourself got sick of this bull and made my farewell to the bedside. In a business run Healthcare world, nurses are not respected or valued at all, find something else! I did.

NOADLS · Aug 27, 2015

If you can't beat them, join them [management] at the top.

Less work, moar money.

SleeepyRN · Aug 27, 2015

I'm right there with you RNhenri. I can't stand the customer service BS. I work in a sub-acute rehab facility where they make us nurses acutely aware of how the patients are shopping customers. Management feeds them bull about how great our facilities are over others in order to get them in the door. They make promises they really shouldn't be making. I admitted a patient a few days ago who came directly from her physician's office to our facility to diurese intravenously with lasix over the course of a few days. With no notice she shows up at our door saying "they" told her, "everything would be ready" for her. Both she and her family were expecting her to be basically immediate hooked up with an IV and foley. Never mind that I had 15 other patients awaiting care at the very beginning of my shift. I now had a new admit to do while doing a song and pony dance for her and her family. I was left to deal with the major attitude from patient and family when they found out they would have to wait hours to start the lasix because we didn't HAVE IV lasix on hand. We had run out of it in our e-box, so I had to order it from pharmacy. The family was livid. "We were told everything was ready!" Do we have the equipment and access to the supplies needed? Yes. Will it be done immediately? Hell no. But they were "promised" everything was "ready."

PinayUSA · Aug 27, 2015

Healthcare is great business to own.

You can go to a hospital or Emergency Room and spend a day or week and come out with a bill that is the same price of a house.

Then you can usually negotiate bill down by about 50 to 90%. Hospital wants people with insurance.

When was the last time you heard a Insurance company or a major Hospital chain go out of business.

RNperdiem, RN · Aug 27, 2015

I learned to accept the universe.

If you have been in this business for a while, you will notice an increase in a "corporate" mentality. Mission statements, performance reviews that reduce you to a quantifiable number, mergers, and charting that exists mainly to justify what we do so we get paid are new.

Pangea Reunited, ASN, RN · Aug 27, 2015

Yes, healthcare is a business. People who complain about that fact are never willing to work for free, curiously. They want the facility to be altruistic while they collect as big of a paycheck as possible.

Many businesses are poorly run, however. If change isn't possible, vote with your feet. :sneaky:

klone, MSN, RN · Aug 27, 2015

Of course healthcare is business. Every entity wants to make money. It's what makes the wheels go round. It's what pays your paycheck. If a hospital was not profitable, you wouldn't have a job.

As far as "customer satisfaction" - there is quite a bit of research correlating happy customers/patients with better compliance with treatment plans, regular care, and improved patient outcomes. So it's not all BS.

elkpark · Aug 27, 2015

Healthcare is great business to own.
You can go to a hospital or Emergency Room and spend a day or week and come out with a bill that is the same price of a house.
Then you can usually negotiate bill down by about 50 to 90%. Hospital wants people with insurance.
When was the last time you heard a Insurance company or a major Hospital chain go out of business.

Around ten years ago, the big Catholic hospital in the midwestern city I was in at the time went out of business -- they were trying to do the right thing and focus on client and staff needs and wellbeing (as they had for decades) instead of focusing on money. Their model became increasingly unsustainable over time. Toward the end, they desperately tried to find another hospital that would merge with them or take them over in order for them to be able to keep operating, couldn't find any other hospital system in the area that would help (even the Catholic hospital system in the next city over), and had to just shut down. It was v. sad.

The hospitals that weren't focused on finances and maximizing revenues have had to become so just in order to survive.

I was in nursing school in the early 1980s when you first started hearing the talk about how "healthcare is a business, running a hospital is no different than selling washing machines," and the business people started moving into hospitals (before that, hospitals were run by physicians and nurses -- many of whom, I hasten to point out, were lousy business people and administrators and ran their hospitals v. poorly).

Healthcare has been running this way, with the focus on the bottom financial line, and for-profit insurance companies have been calling the shots, for decades now and the general public seems to be okay with that (although we were certainly never asked if that's a system we want). Nothing's going to change unless the public rises up in large numbers and objects to the current system, and might not change even if that happened.

klone, MSN, RN · Aug 27, 2015

As long as the US remains a capitalist nation, with a capitalist healthcare system, things won't change.

Socalized medicine is what it's all about.

Been there,done that, ASN, RN · Aug 27, 2015

I've felt that way for 20 years. It is not going to get better, it will get worse.Nurses are the low rung provider of health care.We are not viewed as professionals by the big boys in the penthouse, we are viewed as mules.

In my case, I defected... I work for an insurance company.

Wish we could make the big boys see this a couple hundred times.

The Value of Nurses.

CryssieD · Aug 27, 2015

Unfortunately, it's all about the money, honey--it's the American way! I find it disheartening, too, but I just keep trudging along, trying to deliver quality health care with some remnant of the TLC nurses are so famous for. When healthcare is run as a business, the name of the game is efficiency, not wellness or compassion; nurses are providers of a commodity, and the idea is to make money from that commodity, which is not just the technical skill of your dressing application or IV piggy-backing but the whole of your person--your compassion, your smile, your steadying hand, your experienced eye, everything you have learned and everything that you are. Suffice it to say that nurses are the best buy in the American healthcare system. We are awesome! Keep reminding yourself that!