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CA hospital joint replacement center allows only 2 of its 8 orthopedists to practice there
http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_22853885/fremonts-washington-hospital-patients-doctors-excluded-from-newWhen Robert Cantley needed both knees replaced in August, he was expecting to recover from the surgery at Washington Hospital's fancy, new $42.7 million Center for Joint Replacement.
According to hospital marketing brochures, the center offered "A Higher Level of Care" in a 20,000-square-foot space featuring 25 private patient rooms, a "breathtaking physical therapy space" and a beautifully landscaped therapy garden.
Instead, Cantley did his physical therapy sessions in a dimly lit hallway on the sixth floor of the main hospital in what he described as "a miserable set of circumstances."
Cantley's physician, Dr. John Jaureguito, who has been on the medical staff at Washington for 18 years, said the arrangement means his patients get "second-class" treatment. "Therapy is literally in the hallway," he said. "I've never come across anything like this before."
What Cantley and many other patients at the public hospital didn't know was that access to the new center, the only facility of its kind in the Bay Area, is restricted to just two orthopedic surgeons at the hospital -- the only ones on the Washington staff who met 24 criteria set by the hospital.
According to hospital marketing brochures, the center offered "A Higher Level of Care" in a 20,000-square-foot space featuring 25 private patient rooms, a "breathtaking physical therapy space" and a beautifully landscaped therapy garden.
Instead, Cantley did his physical therapy sessions in a dimly lit hallway on the sixth floor of the main hospital in what he described as "a miserable set of circumstances."
Cantley's physician, Dr. John Jaureguito, who has been on the medical staff at Washington for 18 years, said the arrangement means his patients get "second-class" treatment. "Therapy is literally in the hallway," he said. "I've never come across anything like this before."
What Cantley and many other patients at the public hospital didn't know was that access to the new center, the only facility of its kind in the Bay Area, is restricted to just two orthopedic surgeons at the hospital -- the only ones on the Washington staff who met 24 criteria set by the hospital.
Comment by Don McCanne of PNHP: There are ten orthopedists on the staff of Washington Hospital in Fremont, California who perform joint-replacement surgery, but only two are allowed to use the hospital's state-of-the-art Center for Joint Replacement. The Center charges more than twice the average for California, while the two approved surgeons apparently have a policy of discouraging low-income residents, including Medi-Cal patients.
Perhaps the most appalling consequence is that the patients of the other eight orthopedists receive their post-op physical therapy in the hallway of the main hospital rather than in the new "breathtaking physical therapy space."
As a community hospital, serving the public, and with pressure from the state Department of Public Health and the Washington Township Health Care District, it is likely that this arrangement will be modified.
So what does this have to do with health care reform? We can ask ourselves if a single payer system that separately budgets capital improvements would have ever allocated funds for a state-of-the-art center serving only two prima donna surgeons and their affluent patients exclusively. Of course not. Attention surely would have been directed to a decision on whether or not it was even appropriate to establish a separate joint replacement pavilion. Likely the funds would have been better spent on improving or replacing existing surgical and physical therapy facilities.
Achieving the goal of health care justice for all will be made that much more difficult if our health care professionals and administrators fall below the ethical plane that we envision for the healing arts.
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