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Political notes from Free Press staff writers Terri Hallenbeck, Sam Hemingway and Nancy Remsen


9.20.2007

 

Donning the white coat

For the last two days, I’ve been off at Fletcher Allen Health Care/UVM College of Medicine getting a brain chip implanted about the good work going on at our state’s largest hospital and med school. They do this by:

a) feeding us;
b) introducing us to extremely interesting people who are doing extremely interesting work they are very excited about and who genuinely acted like their favorite thing in the world is to tell other people about it even if those other people are grasping about 1/999th of the science involved.

Nine of us from various walks of Vermont life were in Fletcher Allen’s latest "Community Rounds Intern Program." Also in the class that might be of interest to political blog readers: former state Sen. and possible future candidate for something Matt Dunne of Hartland and former state Rep. Frank Mazur of South Burlington. Dunne, a Democrat, and Mazur, a Republican, pondered for a moment while we were visiting a gene lab whether there is a gene that makes one a liberal or a conservative. They quickly agreed such things do not run in families.

We spent time alternately hearing from hospital mucky-mucks and shadowing doctors, touring labs, seeing the real work of the place. We did not get lost only because someone was always came back to fetch us and take us to the next place, but lemme tell you that new building is sprawling.

I can’t tell you the specifics about the patients I saw or the Fletcher Allen people will come to my home in the middle of the night and put a syringe of something deadly into my veins. Plus, it would be really rude to the patients who unanimously let me watch them while they were at their most vulnerable. (Doctor: "Is it OK if this random person from the community whose knowledge of medicine is limited to pain=bad stands here while I discuss the intimate details of your person?" Patient: "Yeah, sure." Me: "Aw, thanks.")

Suffice to say, though, there was stuff that made you want to cry, wince, shake your head and smile.

What I can tell you is this:

- The new Fletcher Allen buildings are pretty cool, though plenty of people still bring up the name Bill Boettcher in a less than favorable way. I was told that the space with really nice views that was to be Boettcher’s office before he got convicted of hiding the costs of the parking garage is now, rather ironically, the endoscopy department, where people go to have their ends scoped.

- When you look at the cost of the equipment around you, you start to feel like you have a fever. It’s not hard to imagine why health care costs so bleeding much.

- Then when you see somebody who’s really sick, and what that equipment can do for them, you can’t believe you ever gave a thought to how much it costs. You wonder instead why there isn’t more of it.

- Technology has changed things in ways I hadn’t anticipated. The hospital just submitted a certificate of need for an electronic records program that is all the rage, but the amount of stuff going on electronically surprised me. Digital X-rays are available in minutes. Lab reports pop up on a doctor’s computer screen almost as quickly. Doctors check which patient they’ll be seeing next from a computer screen or a BlackBerry. When the computer system goes down – and I’m told it happens from time to time – they have to scramble to revert to non-computerized ways of doing things.

- Really smart people who are performing cutting-edge procedures on patients and finding ways to thwart cancer in laboratories are younger than me. Which felt odd.

- People at Fletcher Allen and the University of Vermont College of Medicine really are finding ways to thwart certain cancers.

- They are also teaching medicine in different ways than they used to at UVM. No more anatomy class. Anatomy is filtered into lots of different classes, because as you might suspect, knowledge of the human body comes up frequently in the practice of medicine. Stats from the first class to be taught this way for all four years indicate the students are faring well on national tests with it. Med students also have access to just about all their class information online.

- There aren't enough of those youngsters in the pipeline to do this kind of work. Despite all the advances in technology and medicine, the hospital is still facing trouble down the line from a shortage of doctors, nurses and every other job connected to health care. When we baby boomers start needing those probes put down our veins, will there be enough radiologists to go around? Will there be enough health care money to pay for the probes?

So the brain chip is working, to a degree. I learned about a lot of cool things Fletcher Allen and the med school are doing. Don’t worry, though, I kept the cynicism gene. When they were talking about the new way of teaching medicine, I asked if that had gone over without objection among all the instructors. No, we were told, it was a close vote.

- Terri Hallenbeck

Comments:
Terri - Your post appeared at about the same time as there was an item on VPR about the state's Public Oversight Commission saying hospital rates in Vermont are going up too fast. Here's a quote from Greg Peters, the chair of the commission:

"And what we're saying is we have to live within our means, and living within our means is staying we think within the limits of the rate of inflation for the economy at large."

Overall inflation is running at no more than 3 percent, maybe closer to 2 percent. If hospitals like FAHC had to live with 2-3% increases a year, what would give? What services that you saw would have to be cut back?

If we want high-tech cutting edge medicine of the type on display at FAHC, does that also mean 7% annual increases, and the corresponding pressures on insurance premiums, employers' health care costs, and taxes to cover benefits for participants in Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, etc.?

Some readers might say "cut administrative costs and go to a single-payer system." Is there a single-payer system anywhere that doesn't end up rationing access to care through waiting lists? Canada and Britain certainly have this problem.
 
I hear the Governor's plan to build a new state psychiatric hospital at FAHC is down the tubes. Glad the Legislature saw it for what it was - an $80 million sweetheart deal, not a way to fix the mental health system.

I suspect there's still a bit of corruption on hospital hill these days. But I'll keep that anonymous so as not to end up with a toe tag after my next check up!
 
Can you say Renaissance Project 2? That's what the Governor's FA plan will turn into eventually.
 
You're pretty witty in your blog Terri -- and write with a nice self-deprecating style. Enjoy reading your posts.
 
It's really not surprising you didn't mention any tour of the administration offices. IMO, both Fletcher Allen and UVM are institutions with great people on the bottom and really questionable decision-makers at the top. FA's board may no longer be criminal, but has it risen a notch above dysfunctional yet. Sorry, I choose Dartmouth.
 
This confirms what I thought all along: we needed the Renaissance Project, even though Boetcher went about it the wrong way. When we get sick or our children or parents or other loved ones are hurt, we want the local hospital to be the absolute f***ing BEST. We don't want to engage in a debate about whether this or that device or building is the most "cost-effective" thing, JUST FIX MY CHILD USING THE BEST TECHNOLOGY AND DOCTORS POSSIBLE! And to attract top notch doctors, you need a cutting edge hospital, not an aging M.A.S.H. unit.

Boetcher was obviously a crook, but I think he understood one thing: the ultra politically correct environment in Burlington would not alow him to push through the cutting edge development that FAHC needed if he went about it the conventional way.

Irony: ultra-whiner Freyne eventually had to go to FAHC for cancer treatment, and appears to have come out a convert.
 
So ... he was a crook, but a good crook??
 
Face it, the Doctor and Nurse jobs suck.

Doctors can make good money, but you can do just about as well in technology without the sleep deprivation, the $200k student loans, the really crappy hours, and call. Doc's don't make any serious money until they are well past being a resident.

Nurses just burn out and the hours suck.
 
...Boetcher is a crook, and Tarrant, in my opinion, played close to that line. As for the assertion that it was the "ultra politically correct environment in Burlington" that Boetcher was up against -- wrong! The Fletcher Allen board and coporate execs were nothing more than shady corporate bulleies up against an overworked and understaffed State of Vermont oversight team in Montpelier. BISHCA, fortunately for all of us, is neither politically correct or incorrect -- they just make certain the finance and health industry toes the line and doesn't cross it.
 
But when you get injured, you want a top notch hospital with first rate doctors and cutting edge equipment in a modern facility.

I do not condone what Boettcher did. But the above wasn't going to become reality through the normal channels of BISHCA approval.
 
you don't condone breaking the law ... but you think it's a good thing -- ??!!
 
No, it's a little more complex than that.

But in the end, I'm glad we got a hospital upgrade that I doubt we would have gotten through the outdated CON process we have now.
 
So Matt Dunne was just "born" with a liberal gene?
 
How about an "transparently ambitious" gene?
 
Ambition made America great!
 
So I guess you got no problem with robber baron capitalists?
 
Matt Dunne for Governor!
 
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