When Dr. Marion Mass got the distress call about her mother in the nursing home, she knew something was wrong.
As a Pennsylvania-based pediatrician, Mass has witnessed the downward spiral of our healthcare system for decades. But her odyssey to help her sick mom get the care she needed made Mass realize just how bad, unfortunate things had become.
Her mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s, kept refusing medication and was violently lashing out at staff. The nursing home recommended transferring her to a nearby hospital with a psychiatric ward.
The trouble started with the hospital’s administrative gatekeepers, who stated the hospital did not accept dementia patients.
For Mass, dealing with suits wasn’t anything new.
Between 1975 and 2020, the number of health care administrators grew by 3,200 percent. The biggest spike in administrative hiring occurred following the Affordable Care Act (i.e., “Obamacare”) in 2010. These excessive administrative costs push the United States to spend five times more per capita on care than other developed nations.
Eventually, Mass’s mother gained admission after a successful appeal. But the new setting didn’t help; if anything, it worsened her treatment.
The first day, Mass found her mom in restraints, wearing a diaper. The horrific scene left Mass in tears.
Mass found two medical students and pleaded with them to help her remove the restraints. Both shrugged her off, saying, “It’s not our job.”
“Our current health system breeds the mentality that one can never, ever deviate from their individual job description, even if in the best interest of the patient,” says Mass. “Sadly, the rulebook has become more important than helping patients.”
A nurse finally helped Mass, but the mistreatment continued. Mass requested an X-ray for her mom’s bruised and swollen hand. Three days later, she finally received the X-ray—a delay the staff blamed on their computer system.
This problematic digital system is a byproduct of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009. HITECH mandated the mass digitization of medical records via government-approved systems. According to Mass, this law “depersonalized medicine,” wherein “nurses and doctors interact far less with the patient than the screen.
Three days later, Mass returned to find her mom unresponsive and dehydrated, despite reported improvement. She rushed to find a nurse, who—after spending more than an hour on the computer—reported her mom had only received 13 ounces of fluid during the previous three days.
“That amounts to a can of soda,” says Mass.
Aghast by this negligence, Mass immediately discharged her mother.
Mass reported the hospital to the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the Joint Commission. After a month-long investigation, the hospital apologized to Mass, informing her of newly adopted changes to avoid future malpractice.
However, about a year later, one of Mass’s friends—also caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s—shared a similar story of mistreatment.
“It was the same hospital where my mother had been so mistreated, the same one where two government agencies had investigated, the same hospital that had supposedly changed their ways,” says Mass.
Government oversight continues to fail, so she balks at proposals to expand the government’s role in health care.
“The government has aided and abetted rising costs despite a decline in quality,” says Mass.
Instead, she advocates for transparency so patients can follow the money. She also recommends loosening restrictions that inundate physicians with nonessential paperwork, distracting them from providing more personalized care.
Pennsylvanians strongly agree with Mass. A Commonwealth Foundation poll found that nine out of ten Pennsylvanians agree that our healthcare system is too bureaucratic and that patients deserve personalized care options.
“Medicine is personal,” says Mass. “All of us are patients and will someday walk the path of disease or hold the hand of a loved one who does.”
When that moment happens, who would you prefer to be at your or your loved one’s bedside: an administrator, a government bureaucrat, or a trained medical professional? While all of us would pick the third option, the first two still insert themselves into our everyday struggles to navigate our convoluted health care system.
Until we undo these troubling trends, we can expect stories like Mass’s to recur.
Erik Telford is the Senior Vice President of Public Relations at the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank.
