This is my oldest daughter on her first trip to Disneyland. She was around 15 months' old. What you don't see in this picture is the nebulizer and other medicines in the storage under her stroller. You also don't see the scars on all four limbs and in her groin left over from her week-long stay in the Pediatric ICU.
I can't even tell you how much the insurance company had to spend on her total care, but I do remember seeing one bill that was for Nursing Services that was over $40,000. There were so many points where the proper intervention would have made all the difference in this outcome. I am also sure that the proper prevention would not have put my baby's life in danger and would have saved the insurance company lots and lots of money.
There is a current fight in Washington over paying for the extension of lowered student loan rates by getting rid of a preventative health fund provided by the Affordable Care Act
(Student loan bill fails as Senate gears up for protracted battle). There was one female politician -- I wish I could find her name and the quote -- who seemed to dismiss this preventative health fund as unnecessary. I found her stance outrageous.
At the same time, this post is not about ObamaCare, all right?
What this post is about is the importance of preventive care in improving patient outcomes and patient safety. We as a society need to emphasize prevention to optimize the state of our health care.
Of course, not all preventive measures are effective nor cost-efficient as Doctors Cohen, Neumann, and Weinstein point out in the February 2008 New England Journal of Medicine (Does Preventive Care Save Money? Health Economics and the Presidential Candidates). As with all evidence-based practices, we need to evaluate preventive medicine in an on-going fashion to identify what works and what doesn't.
