The Great Leap Forward

[oscars]

Give me a break Humps. You are not transferring any patient anywhere without a coded diagnosis. What’s the problem with your local guy? Does he do anal glands part time? Surprised that gun friendly, shoot ‘em up, your low tax county can’t rival the Mayo Clinic.

Me, thanks to being in Maryland, I had cardiac ablation at Johns Hopkins and had my quad tendon repaired by the Chief of Surgery at our local 300 bed hospital (5 minute drive from my house).

[Vern Humphrey]

Give me a break Humps. You are not transferring any patient anywhere without a coded diagnosis.

Exactly right -- and there was no "approved" code he could apply. He finally used "abdominal pain" and got her to a hospital equipped to treat her.

[togor]

So there was a code. Not sure what the point of the anecdote is then. Medicine will always have bureaucracy of some kind or another because of the strengths of incentives, to both receive treatment and to profit from giving it. Things won't always be smooth.