More than 126,000 nursing positions remain unfilled. The shortage has become so severe it is endangering the lives of patients and is a primary reason for overcrowding in emergency departments and cancellation of surgeries, according to a report by an Experts Roundtable panel convened by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
Society for Thoracic Surgeons recently warned that a shortage of heart surgeons looms within a few years. A survey of hospitals found pharmacists, X-ray technicians and therapists are leaving at such an alarming rate it already is affecting the quality of care patients receive.
'Serious Retention Issues'
Hospitals have serious retention issues. A survey, which included 44 hospitals, found those hospitals lost 18 percent to 22 percent of their pharmacists, radiologists and therapists in 2001. This is significantly higher than other industries, which have average attrition rates of 13 percent to 15 percent, she said.
'Crisis'
At least one type of surgical specialty appears to be in trouble as well. Although the shortage of heart surgeons would not become apparent for three to six years, "it's a crisis now. There have to be changes now."
This is because it takes eight to 10 years to train heart surgeons, and there already are drops in residency applications. There were not enough applicants to fill all the available heart surgical resident spots last year. General surgery residencies, the program surgeons must complete prior to specializing in heart surgery, also were left unfilled.
There will not be enough surgeons to perform operations for bypasses, lung cancer and other heart and lung surgeries, he said. The situation likely will be compounded by the aging Baby Boomers and the fact that people are living longer, so there will be an increased need for these types of surgeries, he said.
Cutting Costs
The shortages are a result of HMOs and managed care companies attempting to cut costs and staff. This has placed an "excessive demand" on health workers, which coupled with low salaries has deterred young people from entering these fields.
The Joint Commission Roundtable concluded solutions to the nursing shortage must involve transforming the nursing workplace, increasing enrollment in nursing training programs and paying financial incentives to spur health care organizations to lay out necessary expenditures for high quality nursing care.
"Failure to address this problem aggressively is likely to result in increased deaths, complications, lengths-of-stay, and other undesirable patient outcomes," the roundtable said in a written statement.
No Shortage of Lawyers
Another issue is soaring costs of malpractice insurance and doctors being forced out of business by costly lawsuits. Obstetricians have been hit particularly hard, and in some parts of the country pregnant women cannot find a doctor. An explosion of medical malpractice litigation has caused many communities to lose family practice doctors, obstetricians and gynecologists.
Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations August 8, 2002
I believe my journalist friend Nick Regush summarized the problem quite nicely earlier this year:
"There is no way to be nice about this. There is no point in raising false hopes. There is no treatment or vaccine in sight. There is no miracle breakthrough on the horizon. Medicine, as we know it, is dying. It is entering a terminal phase. What began as an acute illness reached the chronic stage about a decade ago and its progression towards death has been remarkably swift and well beyond anything anyone could have predicted. The disease is caused by conflict of interest, tainted research, greed for big bucks, pretentious doctors and scientists, lying, cheating, invasion by the morally bankrupt marketing automatons of the drug industry, derelict politicians and federal and state regulators - all seasoned with huge doses of self-importance and foul odor."
"There is no way to be nice about this. There is no point in raising false hopes. There is no treatment or vaccine in sight. There is no miracle breakthrough on the horizon.
Medicine, as we know it, is dying. It is entering a terminal phase.
What began as an acute illness reached the chronic stage about a decade ago and its progression towards death has been remarkably swift and well beyond anything anyone could have predicted.
The disease is caused by conflict of interest, tainted research, greed for big bucks, pretentious doctors and scientists, lying, cheating, invasion by the morally bankrupt marketing automatons of the drug industry, derelict politicians and federal and state regulators - all seasoned with huge doses of self-importance and foul odor."
As the article above documents, and as many of us have predicted, the traditional system is ready to collapse.
I do not share this to be the purveyor of bad news, but to announce that a new day is dawning. As many of you are already aware, the drugs and surgery the existing medical establishment has foisted on you are not the solution to better health, but merely their methods of making more money off of you by treating only diseases - diseases their paradigm helped to foster in the first place. Consider that:
Retail pharmacies filled 3 billion prescriptions in the U.S. in 2000.
We are currently spending 1.4 trillion dollars for healthcare in the US, or 14% of our current overall budget. That is projected to double in the next 8 years to 3 trillion dollars, a staggering 17% of our total national output.
Folks, those are figures in trillions, not billions. Three trillion dollars is 3,000 billion dollars.
"The consequences of this shift of resources will be enormous for companies, workers and the government. It will mean a massive transfer of the nation's income, including profits, wages and tax dollars, to disease-oriented traditional medical care. "Employees will face an increasingly stark situation: the more money they receive in on-the-job benefits, the less they'll receive in wages, pensions, or vacation time." - From Business Week August 26, 2002 p 144.
"The consequences of this shift of resources will be enormous for companies, workers and the government. It will mean a massive transfer of the nation's income, including profits, wages and tax dollars, to disease-oriented traditional medical care.
"Employees will face an increasingly stark situation: the more money they receive in on-the-job benefits, the less they'll receive in wages, pensions, or vacation time."
- From Business Week August 26, 2002 p 144.
The sad tragedy is that we are spending all of this money on disease management focused on drugs and surgery and our return on this investment is profoundly poor.
Business Week further comments:
"Perhaps one-third of all medical spending-some $600 billion dollars-may be unnecessary, out-of-date, or even dangerous treatments."
The recent articles below, each of which discusses $3 billion dollar wastes of your money, evidence this.
We are not achieving the high levels of health that we could be. Increasing amounts of people do not have the energy they need to get through the day, while millions of others are suffering with painful crippling diseases because they have violated basic health principles.
Many of you know that my goal is to facilitate the transformation of the current system that is on the verge of collapse. The approaches I have described in over 20,000 pages on Mercola.com over the last five years offer the solution to this crisis.
We can solve well over 90% of all chronic diseases with simple, inexpensive natural therapies.
Following the eating plan and radically reducing grain and sugar intake while optimizing omega 6:3 fat ratio will likely reduce over 50% of the health problems Americans currently experience.
I know this is true because I have successfully treated many thousands of patients from all over the country with these techniques.
Mercola.com is already an outstanding health resource for you. But beginning this autumn and slated for completion at the end of the year, we will launch powerful new technology offering you a simple, one-stop method of obtaining the knowledge and advice to solve nearly any health care problem without expensive drugs, vitamin supplements, or surgeries.
My approach in providing you this solution is two-phased. The first involves establishing all the information necessary to solve your problems. This has been a massive undertaking stretching over several years, but we are rapidly nearing completion, and much of this expertise is already available to you on Mercola.com. Our refinements will include making all this wisdom even easier to access - literally putting the research and knowledge of many experts right at your fingertips.
In the second phase, targeted for completion before the end of the year, Mercola.com will offer you the world's most sophisticated database of natural medicine healthcare practitioners. You, the user community, will rate them, so you can find the outstanding practitioners closest to your home.
My experience is that even with all the right answers, many people need the guidance of such professionals to help them implement a successful health recovery or maintenance program. I am constantly saddened that so many patients fly in to see me in my office because they don't know of anyone close to them who can help them with their health problems. This is really an information problem that the Internet can easily solve, and it is my aim to do just that.
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Hypocrisy Oath -- The Great Divide Between Principal And Practice In Modern Medicine
3 Three Billion Dollar Hoaxes:
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3 Billion Dollar Hoax
Another 3 Billion Dollar Hoax
Bombshell -- Major Premarin Trial Halted