Overlapping surgeries to face US Senate inquiry

[unhappycamper]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/12/senator-launches-inquiry-into-simultaneous-surgeries-hospitals-including-mass-general/wxEsbg5r2poqtk88LkcHQI/story.html



Tony Meng, a Westwood father of two, did not learn his physician also was operating on another patient during his 11-hour spine surgery until after he emerged paralyzed.

Overlapping surgeries to face US Senate inquiry
By Jonathan Saltzman and Jenn Abelson Globe Staff
March 13, 2016

The chairman of a powerful US Senate committee has asked 20 hospital systems, including the parent company of Massachusetts General Hospital, to provide detailed records about the controversial practice of allowing surgeons to operate on more than one patient at a time.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a Utah Republican who heads the Finance Committee, has requested the information, including the total number of “concurrent surgeries,’’ broken down by specialty, at each hospital from 2011 to 2015, and policies about whether patients are informed beforehand.

Committee staffers have already met with representatives of the American College of Surgeons, the world’s largest surgeons’ organization, which is drafting new guidelines to regulate double-booking of surgeries in the wake of a recent Globe Spotlight Team report on the practice.

“We are concerned about reports of patients not being informed that they may be sharing their surgeon with another patient, and we are especially concerned by reports that, in some cases, steps have been taken to actively conceal this practice from patients,’’ Hatch wrote in a copy of the Feb. 16 letter to hospitals obtained by the Globe.

[davidpdx]

1. What a bunch of bullshit

There are now computers that can be programmed to have a machine do surgeries. Yet these doctors are allowed to risk patients lives and do two surgeries at the same time.

BTW I know about this because one of my former coworkers had to have two surgeries back to back and it took something like 13 hours (there was a break in the middle for 45 minutes to reprogram the machine. Granted her's was gastric intestinal, so I doubt they'd use that for a spinal surgery, but the other one may have been able to.

[feathateathn]

2. Um, no.

Autonomous surgical robots do not exist. The surgical robots in existence are merely a tool for the surgeon. It does nothing on its own and does not displace the surgeon

[davidpdx]

4. I must have misunderstood what she said then.

Given I don't work at the same place anymore, I have no way to contact her.

[raging moderate]

3. Tony Meng needs help. Is he getting help?

It's nice to see Republicans actually doing some good work in governing.

[21st Century Poet]

5. This is why America needs Bernie Sanders.

That is absolutely horrific This is why I believe America needs Bernie Sanders as president. The huge amounts of money spent on healthcare are not concomitant with the results one would expect to achieve. The whole healthcare system needs an overhaul, and now not in ten years' time. Too many people would have unnecessarily got injured, died at the hands of a physician or been left untreated by then.

[Dustlawyer]

6. I remember a case from my younger days involving the father of one of our legal

secretary's father. He went in for a hernie surgery and his anesthesiologist was going back and forth doing multiple surgeries at a time. His actual surgeon was operating and realized that his patient had stopped bleeding. The anesthesiologist was in the other operating room at the time. Turns out that in this brand new surgical suite, the contractors hooked up the lines in the wall wrong (mislabeled) so that the patient wasn't getting oxygen, just straight gas. He stopped bleeding during surgery because he was dead, and no one was there to monitor his vitals. Had someone been doing the job they received a lot of money for doing, they would have noticed the O2 saturation levels dropping.

GREED!!!!!

[rladdi]

7. Republicans concerned about patients. no way. They are against the American citizens.

The senate or house committee meeting never accomplish anything except for a sounding board for the committee members. Those committees waste tens of millions annually and do nothing. It pure policitics