America. The
Best Healthcare?
Thursday night my elderly
mother-in-law fell and broke her wrist.
She called 911 and the paramedics took her to one of the major hospitals
in Los Angeles. We were at the theater.
Fortunately a friend in her building happened by and
saw her on the floor and called our house.
Fortunately, we had a houseguest staying in our guest room. Fortunately the friend was home. Fortunately
we saw the message at intermission and sped to the hospital.
Otherwise, they might
well have sent her home in a taxi, drugged, confused, and very unsteady on her
feet, with no support at all.
When we arrived
around 8:30, she had been there for two hours, confused and in pain. They had x-rayed the arm, wrapped it in a
soft cast, hung her fingers unwrapped in wire hangers to let the arm set and
pumped her full of pain medication. Six
hours later, around 12:30 they took some more x-rays and said we could take her
home with a prescription for pain pills she was to take every 6 hours and a
referral to an orthopedist.
I asked for a social
worker or case manager so we could get home health services. “Don’t have anything like that,” the nurse
told me. “No discharge planner?”
“No.”(The hospital
actually has a home health department with an emergency number. We found that out two days later from their
website.)
I asked the ER doctor,
“What do we do with her?”
Her answer did not
include “I’ll write you a prescription for a visiting nurse to evaluate
her.” Her answer was, “She’ll have to go
home with one of you.”
(Note: they did not even give us one extra pain pill that she could take at 6am. Instead, my husband had to drive from 1:30am to 2:15 in search of an all night pharmacy. Fortunately I was at the house and could take care of
her, while he was gone.)
TO BE CONTINUED:
