The Donut Hole of Library Access

We have heard of the donut hole for Medicare prescription drug coverage where people experience a coverage gap for their prescription drug coverage.  I think there is a donut hole for medical information. There are doctors, nurses, researchers who are affiliated with an institution (but not officially part of the institution) or they are private practice who have privileges but are not employed by the hospital.  These people often fall in the donut hole for access to medical information. There are more and more of these people as universities buy hospitals but the university doesn’t/can’t provide library resources to the hospitals.  Hospital systems are buying other hospital systems and wrongly assuming the library resources will be cheaper (bulk discount) or that they don’t have to pay for library resource because “aren’t we all just one system now that you bought us and we want what you have.” Library resources are expensive and when met with the surprise cost (when a new system is acquired) administrators often do not understand the basics of library resource licensing and costs. Why would they?  The amount of a library’s budget is not even on their radar when it comes to the budget of the entire hospital.  Unfortunately, they want across the board cuts and the department manager must enforce those cuts. We have little data that says medical libraries save lives and save money in the long run.  What little data we do have has...
Source: The Krafty Librarian - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs