NOS news•
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Judith Pennarts
Nieuwsuur investigative editorial team
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Sander Zurhake
healthcare editor
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Judith Pennarts
Nieuwsuur investigative editorial team
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Sander Zurhake
healthcare editor
Patients who have multiple conditions at the same time are often sent from one department to another where special doctors do their separate treatments. Patients often get lost in the maze of care.
Patients are often their own care managers of their increasingly complex care processes. Because what exactly did the doctor do? And didn’t the cardiologist warn against the medications the internist prescribed for one disease because those medications would make the other disease worse?
Patients are forced to keep an overview themselves, as consultation and coordination between doctors with different medical specialties is not provided, according to joint research by the NOS and News hour.
Frivolously
This leads to fragmented care and can cause disasters, for example due to medication errors. 79-year-old Anjo Geluk has experienced what a lack of coordination can lead to.
She feels “weak on her feet” after her original knee replacement. If she wants to get anywhere now, a crutch is a must. Because fall is an exception.
“We’ll never know if my knee would have been in better shape if I had gotten good rehabilitation in the hospital,” says Geluk. Because she didn’t when several doctors lost an overview of the her overall health condition.
Patient as a ping-pong ball
A hospital bacterium entered her knee while she was in the orthopedics department and the result was a serious infection. Heavy antibiotic treatment through the IV was required for weeks to remove the bacteria. Geluk’s kidneys were damaged as a side effect of the medication. So she was suddenly transferred to the nephrology department.
“Without any consultation with me, but apparently there was no coordination between the doctors,” says Geluk. “Because I never saw anyone from orthopedics again, even if I needed it guidance with exercises for my knee to rehabilitate properly.”
Sonas’ story does not stand alone. Of course, there are also patients who are not only a ping-pong ball between departments within one hospital, but even between several hospitals.
This happened to Diana Kwast. She developed several chronic diseases and had 9 different specialists in 5 different hospitals:
Patients like Geluk and Kwast who have multiple conditions at the same time will be the most common patients in hospitals until 2040. And this is already visible to those who ask people about their conditions during fast at the outpatient clinics of the Jeroen Bosch Hospital in Den Bosch.
An older woman on a mobility scooter: “I spend too much time in the hospital, with different doctors: ophthalmologist, rheumatologist, for Parkinson’s disease, internist, neurologist, different surgeons. I have just been there again for twelve days. “
‘Hospital subscription’
A man in his 66s with a mobility scooter also seems to be a regular customer. “Only twice this year, but last year 23 times, including my operation on my leg. And now that sugar has just been discovered, I also have a cataract in my eye.”
“I never came to the hospital, but now I have a membership,” said an 84-year-old man. “I have to be here at least eight more times in the next few months. I do vascular surgery, cardiology and nephrology.”
In this hospital in Den Bosch, the doctors are busy changing the way they treat and work together. Since the corona pandemic, interns, clinical geriatricians, pulmonologists and cardiologists have been working together every morning in a special admission department to develop a treatment plan for complex patients during a structured consultation.
The program is successful. On average, patients can go home two days earlier. In addition, patients visit fewer doctors because the collaboration has reduced the number of mutual referrals. Because of its success, the hospital will make the new way of working standard in other departments. The first outpatient clinic will move to the new approach from May. This hospital is currently one of the few places where work is done in this way.
2024-04-26 19:55:21
#patients #lost #hospital #care #maze
