Stop Drive-Through Mastectomies!
Posted by realityrounds on May 9, 2009
Karen is your mother, daughter, wife, sister, girlfriend, grandmother. She is a woman you know or will know in your lifetime. Karen has breast cancer.
After an eight hour surgery to remove her breasts, Karen is sent home after 23 hours post surgery. This magical, cost saving 23 hours, includes the eight hours of surgery that included significant blood loss, manipulation of tissue, muscle, and nerves to remove the cancerous breasts that threaten to steal her life. Groggy from anesthesia, and in intense pain, Karen struggles to get dressed to leave the hospital. Karen is your mother, daughter, wife, sister, girlfriend, grandmother. Karen is you.
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Dealing with the devastating diagnosis of breast cancer is bad enough. But being kicked out of the hospital after a mere 23 hours, and sent home with dressing changes and drainage tubes hanging from your chest is ludicrous. Karen is actually lucky. Insurance companies are lobbying to make mastectomies an outpatient procedure. This reminds me of when insurance companies refused to let women stay more than 24 hours in the hospital after a vaginal birth. It took infant deaths, and consumer outrage to change this practice.
Where’s the outrage now? Women need to support each other, and support the bipartisan Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act in Congress. Some will argue that mandating a longer stay for women post-mastectomy is more unneeded governmental involvement in health care. It will only increase health care costs that are already sky rocketing. If these critics are serious about saving health care dollars, especially as it relates to women’s health, maybe they should be actively trying to reduce the rate of C-Sections in this country. Or, they could be promoting breast feeding as a cost savings for both women, children and society.
Sending women home after an emotional and painful surgery as an outpatient shows a lot about where are priorities are as a society. These Drive-Through mastectomies are shameful. Show some outrage and click on the link below:
RR
RN-ish said
Thanks for this post! I was unaware of how short a stay it is for a mastectomy. I believe the best place to recover is your own home, but women surely deserve more time and support in the hospital immediately post surgery. I often wonder who in the insurance industry makes up these guidelines to kick people out of the hospital. And why does it always seem like it is women who they target?
realityrounds said
It is pretty outrageous, and sickening at the same time. This must be stopped.