The Coming Collapse of the U.S. Health Care System

It’s four in the morning and you awaken with crushing chest pain. Your family calls 911 and paramedics arrive and diagnose a cardiac event. They inform you that they need to transport you forty-five minutes away because your two local hospitals have closed over the last several months. Even when you arrive at the hospital, there is massive overcrowding and they inform you that there are no ICU beds open for you in that fifty percent of the beds in the cardiac unit are “browned out” due to lack of staff. This nightmare is an all too familiar post pandemic reality about the delivery of health care in our country. This is not the expectation that the public expects in the delivery of health care in one of the richest nations in the world that has been at the cutting edge of health care innovation of the last century. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] What has led to this post-pandemic nightmare is multifactored. The pandemic changed how health care professionals are both valued and how they see themselves. During the height of the pandemic they were heroes that were endangering their lives to help the community. But now things look different. Around 7,000 nurses on strike in New York City nursing strike is emblematic of the dire situation. Nurses, who are essential to the critical functioning of all hospitals, are entitled not only to more equitable compensation and benefits, but ultimately safer staffing ratios in all patient care settings. What&rsq...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized freelance health Source Type: news