The research on more than four million patients found that those who had surgery on a Friday were 44 per cent more likely to die following the procedure than those who had the same operations on a Monday - with the risks steadily increasing as the week went on.
Researchers suggested the findings show the impact of poorer hospital care at weekends, with fewer staff on duty and more reliance on temporary workers - increasing the risks to patients during the critical 48 hours after surgery.
Positive net present value of living patients exist only where profits from the majority of (non-coerced) customer-provider relationships are available. Alternative systems must rely on the political process or more efficient forms of coercion for "quality" of service.
Increasingly, market-based health care service can only be found outside of the political reach of nations from which patients are seeking service. Medical tourism will eventually morph into flotillas of slightly offshore private facilities. The unions of health care workers currently monopolizing the field will themselves eventually demand insurance coverage for access to such facilities. Most providers however, will not accept any third party insurance if it comes with all the strings current attached.
Posted by: John Chittick | Monday, June 03, 2013 at 01:09 PM