I happened to notice the following dollar figure in a medical malpractice case being tried in Wisconsin. The Madison County Record reports that Christina McCray was undergoing a right hand carpal tunnel surgery in 2001 when she was over-sedated by the anesthesia team, causing her to become bradycardic, hypotensive and hypoxic which caused severe and permanent brain damage. She is now in a PVS. One of McCrary's expert witnesses, Jan Klosterman, a certified life care nurse planner testified that McCrary's medical bills will average $250,000 per year --totalling $8.4 million if she lives another 30 years.What does this have to do with medical futility? It permits one to perform a back-of-the-napkin calculation of the cost of inappropriate care. If it costs $250,000 to treat one PVS patient for one year, and there are around 25,000 PVS patients in the United States, then the total cost exceeds $6 billion per year -- more than the entire federal portion of the SCHIP program. That is a considerable amount of money to so deplorably misspend.
hi!
ReplyDeletewell, i agree with your view on the missappropriation of funds if these pvs patients were to be kep alive.
however, i do not think that they should be allowed to die simply because it is too expensive to keep them alive...
the decision in airedale v bland was a desirable one, as it opened an avenue for grieving relatives to allow patients to die in dignity. in the case of terry schiavo, her parents were willing to care for her and keep her alive. they would have paid for her medical care, so why did the court rule that all rights to decide terri's fate belonged to her husband, whose track record as a husband is certainly not a magnificent one?
The Schiavo court's job was to select a guardian for Terri. The criteria for that selection required choosing the person best position to make the decision that Terri would have made for herself. The facts suggested (at least to many experienced courts) that Michael was that person. In short, the court in effect authorized the removal of Terri's ANH because that is what she herself would have wanted -- not because that is what health care providers, the insurance company, the court, society, or anyone else wanted.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing that sometimes patients are over-sedated. This situation is not supposed to happen in professional hands because it means a life a millions of dollars!
ReplyDeleteThis is not in Wisconsin - most likely Madison COUNTY in Illinois?
ReplyDeleteAre there up-to-date estimates for the total cost of care for PVS patients? Thanks!
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