Hey, Dude, Where’s My Operating Room?

I love to point out how bad the government is when they try to run healthcare. In this article Six CEOs and No Operating Room: The Impossible Job of Fixing the Indian Health Service you will see that the absolute mess they create:

That is despite extensive efforts at renovation and hundreds of thousands of dollars paid for surgeons who couldn’t do their jobs because they had no place to operate. The hospital can’t deliver babies or do colonoscopies.

But wait, there’s more:

• Jerry Dale, an owner of Medical Air Rescue Co., said his company often flies at least three or four patients a week from Rosebud to regional hospitals. Each trip costs more than $8,000, he said.
• Rosebud and some of the 23 other hospitals in the IHS system suffer from systemic problems, including leadership turnover, staffing shortages and facility breakdowns. There have been few signs of an overhaul under Adm. Weahkee, whose style is described as conciliatory by people who have worked with him.
• Earlier this year, an investigation by the Journal and the PBS series Frontline showed IHS officials had long suspected that a pediatrician, Stanley Patrick Weber, was a pedophile. Mr. Weber had been transferred from one facility to another after coming under investigation. He has been convicted of abusing six boys in two states, and is appealing.
• The U.S. hospital regulator returned in July 2018 to find the emergency room had again run afoul of federal rules. Among other errors, an intoxicated 12-year-old girl had attempted suicide while left unattended by hospital staff despite a previous effort to take her own life.

This is one article but a lot of work went into investigate the Indian Health System. Who out there has worked for them? What are your thoughts?

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