NewbornsUSA: Hospitals: Do HMOs discharge mother-child pairs too early?

studio3z (Nov12,2k12)

Sometime back, Jamie Court's Consumer Watchdog organization campaigned to get the then-practice of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) to discharge newly-delivered babies and moms ony 8 hours after delivery. (See: Pediatrics digest article for one later counter-view on the Length Of Stay [LOS] issue.) The movement finally resulted in Federal legislation that went into effect in 1998 and required a 48-hour minimum before discharge of the mother-child pair.  In another study, summarizes different findings:  "The law had little impact on re-admission rates for privately insured, vaginally delivered newborns, but reduced re-admission rates for privately insured c-section-delivered and Medicaid-insured vaginally delivered newborns by statistically significant amounts. Our calculations suggest the program was not cost saving."  But cost savings were not the issue, altho if you follow Herman Dooyeweerd's kernel-designation for the economic modal aspect of creation, you might jump too quickly to the mention of "saving."  Either way,  the HMOs desire to save expenditures on newborns by early release does not factor in the value, despite the cost to an HMOs bottom line, of reducing re-admission rates of  "privately insured c-section-delivered and Medicaid-insured vaginally delivered newborns by statistically significant amounts."  So the question is:  Shoud newborns who don't fit into the above pin-pointed category be released within 8 hours of delivery?  To evaluate this matter we shoud take into account both the general concern to be super-cautious regarding newborns - "Bettere safe than sorry" — and the hospital-specific concern of endangering a newborn as a result of viruses and other diseases that lurk in hospital air ducts, etc.  Blank-cheque endorsement of activist groups is not a reformationally-appropriate practice; but again these kinds of groups, occupying space in their own societal sphere, add value to a society's dynamics for change.  If they get only a certain percentage right, when the issue, concern, cause is viewed in hindsight, then the percentage that outlasts all hindsighted critiques may well justify the organizations work and cost to donors, funders, and free-lance philanthropists.

The pix below is a clip from a strongly-visual brochure published online in PDF format by Consumer Watchdog.  You can view and download the brochure here.  I'm not endorsing Consumer Watchdog, as I haven't studied its advocacy and action campaigns on most issues (and since 1984 there have been many CW campaigns on numerous issues).   But on the campaign to require health insurance companies to justify in advance any proposal of raising the payment rates on policies consumers' buy strikes me as terribly good (will Obamacare do away with the need for this previous legislation?).  And now I've discovered the abuse cited below, in which CW has apparently been the leading force to curb the horrendous medical practice in hospitals to send mothers and their newborns home only 8 hours after delivery. Taken together, and making room for the nuancing of the argument for the second mentioned campaign, that to me further suggests a reformationally-significant track record, at least in regard to medical issues.  I will keep watching Consumer Watchdog for the excellence I expect in the societal sphere of action-groups, especially for better health, and most especially after Obamacare kicks in, universally as mandated and Supreme Court approved as constituional (January 2013).

— Albert Gedraitis