This is clearly one of the
goofiest studies to come out in a long time. The JAMA editors decided it would be a good idea to show that people who had heart attacks at night and on wekends were far more likely to die than those who had a heart attack during a weekday! Well, let me think. Is it possible that the fully-staffed, rested and alert daytime staff might do a better job than those who have been up all night without an on-call anaesthesiologist or support staff? Maybe that could be a factor. I guess I just wonder how the people who pay for these studies justify their expense accounts.
The worst part of this study is that they didn't make a point of the glaring reality that our nation's ability to provide excellent care is LIMITED! Yes, that's right. Health care has to be provided by people who are highly trained and in limited supply. As we careen closer to the cliff of socialized medicine this shortage is going to become more and more acute. Nobody likes to spend their weekends and holidays and 3A.M.'s at work but healthcare professionals have to do just that. The probability that people will continue to willingly do that for less money every year is low. In fact the projection is that our country will lose 1/3rd of all physicians currently practicing in the United States within the next 5 years. That means we have a lot of heart attacks that are going to get even worse treatment. If you think waiting times are bad now, just wait. Practicing waiting is going to be part of the socialized medicine experience if we trudge down the same joyless path that Canada and others have. It's ugly and bound to get uglier unless we come up with a better solution than the one's we're seeing. I would suggest that promoting healthy habits has become an "emergency medicine" issue. If we're going to wage a war on disease let's make it against preventable illness like obesity.
By removing the perverse incentives to provide overly aggressive interventional treatments by doctors the government should get out of the way and let the marketplace and faith-based organizations begin the slow hard work of rebuilding a free-market medical economy. Reigning in the lobbyists for health care constituencies might be agood idea as well but I still like the idea of free speech. Can ya tell?
