Privacy and Stupidity

Here in the US, every visit to a doctor, every visit to a hospital, every visit to any type of health care provider is governed by the HIPPA laws. The US Department of Health and Human Services if worried that my private health information may not be private enough. So there are rules upon rules and forms upon forms. There are reams of rules, stacks of forms and then there is the:

HCAHPS. Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Provider and Systems. The government sponsors the collection of data from recently hospitalized patients. The survey is sent to a named person regarding a stay at a named facility. So much for privacy there, Big Government.

The Survey is built to elicit the patient's or perhaps client's perspective on the hospital stay. I don't know what term the medical community is using for sick people right now. They used to be patients and then they were clients. I have no idea what they are anymore. Income stream, I guess.

Anyway, the questions are either Yes or No, which is straight forward. Then the assessment is judged as Never, Sometimes, Usually, or Always.

How often did the nurses treat you with courtesy and respect? asks the survey (formatting from survey maintained). I guess that's fairly straight forward. Maybe. Some patients (I'm just going to call them that for this) are quite sensitive and if you aren't overly solicitous, you are rude. If you aren't fawning, you are rude. If you tell them it isn't time yet for the paid medication, you are rude.

The second question is did the nurses listen carefully to you? As a woman, as a nurse, and as a mother I've learned how to multitask. If I didn't do three things at once, I would have never gotten everything done. How in the hell can someone else tell if I'm listening carefully. Some people feel slighted if you don't stop everything and sit down with your hands folded and listen CAREFULLY to them. Great. I can sit there and my mind can be a million miles away. Or I can be fiddling with the IV and comprehend everything you say, words and nuance.

How often did nurses explain things in a way you could understand is the next question. So, if I use normal adult words and you have a little baby vocabulary but are too embarrassed to tell me you have no idea what I'm talking about when I use a word like "urine" which I think is a common word, I guess I would be graded poorly. No question on whether or not the patient asked clarifying questions if things weren't explained to his or her satisfaction.

Next question is how about how long it took for staff to answer the call button. Well, how long is relative. But actual wording is how often did you "get help as soon as you wanted it." Well, I don’t care how fast you can answer those bells, by the time you get to the room, it is already too late because "as soon as" happened before the call bell was hit.

The coup de grace for me was this question: During this hospital stay, how often was your pain well controlled? Now, let's say you had some major surgery. Let's also say you were a drug addict or alcoholic at some point in your past. Even if you were a casual drug user or moderate drinker, this is a problem now. There is nothing here to see what sort of patient is answering the questionnaire. But if you were a heroin user at one time, I can pretty much guarantee that you are not going to answer this question with the Always choice. Very low likelihood of the Usually, too.

There are people who are suffering the agony of the damned when they get a hangnail. Their pain is not going to be controlled after major abdominal surgery. It's not. Get over it. Won't happen. There are people who can be so soporific they are almost not breathing, but open their eyes to tell the world they are in such pain that on a scale of one to ten, they are at about fourteen.

Some hospitals cater to a different client base and their patients may be more of the entitled mindset. If they come to the hospital with a problem that doesn't warrant an MRI, but they want an MRI, they are going to feel slighted or less cared for. There is no way to compare a patient's expectations that are unreasonable to one whose expectations actually align with reality.

Just today in Annie's Mailbox was an angry woman whose husband suffered from arthritis. She was outraged at doctors who couldn't prescribe something to help her husband's disease. All they could give him was more pain medicine. Well, there isn't anything to cure the disease. That same mindset is going to skew these results as well.

So all in all, I'm thinking this is against HIPPA privacy codes and will result in faulty "science" numbers.

But all the compiling of answers and making of graphs and charts and listing each hospital against the other will, I'm sure give people jobs. So in these trying economic times, this is probably just fine and dandy. 

February Almost Over

I finally went to my home owners association web page again to see if the people who begged to be on the board have lived up to their "campaign" promises. Nope. Everyone who had a little bio in the newsletter sent to each home owner said their main concern was a lack of communication.

And immediately after the annual board meeting where there were new board members elected, there was a tentative minutes report posted. That was last November. It is still there as tentative. There was no meeting in December. January did have a meeting and the minutes should have been approved in February and posted. The November meeting's minutes should also have been approved.

There is no other message after the November temporary minutes. There is no approved minutes for November let alone January. There are no tentative minutes from February's meeting. No word at all since November.

There is a message board there as well. There is not one single message from 2009. I'm too lazy to actually count the days, but according to Wikipedia is the 54^th day of the year. I could probably go back there and find out how far back in 2008 the last entry was, but who cares?

The only notice we get from our esteemed HOA is when the annual fee is due. And if we commit some major infraction such as putting the trash can out too soon or leaving it out too long. THEN they can communicate with the homeowner.

There are several houses here that have been foreclosed on. They remain empty. Haunting reminders of the economic times. Windows peering out on the world without benefit of curtain or drapery. And, as an added bonus, since the local twice a week newspaper has decided to just toss one day's paper in the yard each week without needing to subscribe, the empty houses are accumulating these soggy, yellowing packages of old news.

I have no idea who the association is going to yell at for the messy yards with the papers killing off portions of the grass. But at least come spring, there won't be as much too tall grass for them to not have anyone to yell at about. Boy, is that a convoluted sentence. But I live in a convoluted place.

I did see in the line item budget that came last fall that my yearly annual fee will, in part, help to sponsor the neighborhood swim team. I had two sons who joined in several sports. Baseball, soccer, football, hockey, and lacrosse. Each team had a fee. We, as parents who wanted our kids in sports, paid the fees. The hockey and lacrosse fees were in the hundreds of dollars per year. And we had to buy all the equipment ourselves. I have no idea why I'm paying for some kid I've never met to swim. I wish I wasn't. I'm a curmudgeon, perhaps, but I don't think it really takes a village to let some spoiled little brat swim. Let the parents of the spoiled little brat pay for it. I paid for the two spoiled little brats I had.

So that has been my February. Not much to do. But lots to complain about. Especially if you look for it. And I do. 

Not much

It had been a while since I've last written a blog entry. It is because there has been nothing much going on.

I've read a book, am half way through another, and nearly finished with a third. I've played a bazillion computer games. 

I'm going to be a grandmother to a new baby, but the little darling refused to cooperate and we still don't know if it is XX or XY.

We went to Hilton Head on Sunday and had a great time. I have a whole bunch of pictures, but I can't actually update my web page because my old computer is broken and my new one doesn't have the correct program.

That is pretty much the sum total of my last ten days. 

Do?

What do I do? I write words that no one will read. I write paragraphs lost in bits and bytes, sitting on servers, ignored. I write essays stored in memory and forgotten, lost and alone.

I dream. But not well enough. I pretend, but with a decided lack of realism. I waste time.

I play Solitaire. Thousands of games of solitaire. I have an 84% win rate. I play insipid computer games. There are new games to download every Tuesday. They are so stupid in and of themselves, they need a story line to connect the rounds. And so …

I edit the words in front of me and wonder why someone who writes this poorly is paid and I am not. They are writing in English, which is probably a foreign language. At least I hope so. No one raised in the tongue should be this rotten at writing out one sentence at a time.

I become irritated. I see horrible writers published. I am not a literary writer. I am not a genius writer. I am not a bad writer. But … realistically, I am not ever going to be a remunerated writer.

There are millions upon millions of blogs. I can write there. No one reads it, but I can write it. There are billions upon billions of web pages. I can write there,too. No one reads it there either, but I can write it.

I need something to do with my days, and so I write. But it is getting to be more of a drain each day. Why am I writing? If it is to please myself, I'm no longer pleased. And I'm the only one who reads it. So what's the point?

I woke in what should have been the middle of the night, but it was too close to morning. So I began mulling over my problems at four-something ante meridian. I should have been sleeping. It would have been more useful.

How many unpublished books of essays do I need? I think I have enough of those. Could I take Cassie and make it into a novel? Maybe. Then I could have more unpublished crap sitting on my computer, taking up memory, serving no purpose.

I could be one of those ladies who lunch. Except I have no one to lunch with. I could join groups hither and yon. I've tried that. I prefer being lonely at home to being lonely in a group. So will forego that torture.

People who are busy, long for days in which to have nothing on a To Do List. They have no idea what they are asking for. If you have no To Do List, you really don't even need to get out of bed, either at four in the morning or noon.

I have no idea what I do. I know what I did. I can create a laundry list of what I did. All past tense. I have no idea what I do, present tense. Which leads me to the conclusion that I have no idea about future tense, either.

Thirty more years of this. What to do.