Boulder City Hospital

Posts Tagged ‘Hospital’

Is it possible to leave a hospital with worse health than when it admitted you? Unfortunately, it can happen. In theory, hospitals should be clean as a bean. However, that is not always the case. Thus, it is important to follow some basic guidelines, in order to find the cleanest (and perhaps safest) hospital available:

1. Secure a copy of the hospital area’s cleaning instructions, where you will stay.

Regardless of which part of the hospital in which you will stay, these instructions should include detailed descriptions about how personnel keep the area sparkling clean. While this may seem like overkill, remember that bacteria can kill. You are a paying customer, so you have the right to learn how the hospital cleans a certain area.

2. Determine if hospitals are certified and have retained certification

Learn if the hospital has received Cleaning Industry Management Standard (CIMS) certification. This is an industry standard. Receiving and maintaining this certification ensures that the hospital has been meticulous in keeping the institution sufficiently clean-for at least the past two years. This ensures that personnel are wearing hygienic clothing, such as cheap urbane scrubs, and are properly sanitizing all medical tools.

3. Ensure that the staff adheres to policies after the hospital admits you

The medical personnel should follow several cleanliness procedures. They must wash their hands with a sanitizer, prior to touching you. Stethoscopes must also undergo this process. Are personnel sanitizing instruments properly and washing their hands frequently? Observe whether the personnel are wearing hygienic clothing, such as scrubs.

Many types of bacteria in hospitals, referred to as “superbugs,” have become resistant to various types of antibiotics. Thus, taking certain precautions can help to reduce the rate at which people transmit bacteria between people.

4. Learn about Medicare/Medicaid’s HCAHPS results

Since March of 2008, hospitals acquiring financial refunds from Medicaid and Medicare, have been conducting HCAHPS surveys through their customers. HCAHPS refers to the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems. This survey includes clients’ assessments in various areas, including “Cleanliness and Quietness of the Physical Environment.” You can obtain results of a hospital’s surveys, via the Internet.

5. Verify that the personnel are IEHA educated

IEFHA stands for International Executive Housekeepers Association. Inquire whether the cleaning personnel in the hospital have received AEHA training. This is yet another indicator that a hospital has prioritized cleaning its facilities properly.

6. Request for a tour of a hospital

When taking a tour of a hospital, ask yourself these questions:

• How do cleaning crews clean hospital rooms, and how often?
• Are carpets spotless?
• What hand-washing process does medical staff follow?
• Do breathe in an overall clean scent?
• Is there “hidden” dirt?

Do you want to stay in a clean hospital? If so, then you can follow some basic steps, to ensure that you will be in the cleanest and safest environment possible. For instance, scrubs can reduce the rates of bacterial infections. Make sure that your hospital has a clean bill of health!

When admitted in a hospital.

It must be accepted that the people of India have not full faith in God. Even in hands of an expert doctor, they still pray before God that their relative, a family member or they themselves may come out of the hospital hale and healthy and fully treated. The people visiting them would not be encouraging them and they shall be telling those stories where the ill or the diseased people died because of wrong treatment or otherwise.

The period in hospital is full of tension, full of worries and pressures and instead of improving, there are chances that the ailing person may get more demoralization till he is in hospital. It would be better if we do not allow our relatives, others who want to see the ailing man or they have come as a customary visit and they must be kept out of the hospital. These people would not give encouragement to the ailing person, rather they shall be demoralizing the ailing person.

As far as we, the people of India are concerned, we are poor people and we know treatment has become very costly. Most of the expert doctors are not in government hospitals, but they have opened their own clinics and here charges are on the hire side and in government hospitals, most of the facilities are not available. That is also an additional tension and pressure on our mind. We are having an eye on the doctors and nurses attending our patient and when they are going out we run after them just to find out the latest position of the patient and his future. Each word of doctor shall be taken in mind and it can give us hope and pleasure and it can give us more tension. So as long as our patient is in hospital, we are not free and without pressure and if we ourselves are in hospital, then we are looking at the faces of doctors, at the faces of nurses and at the faces of our relatives attending us and if they have a smile, we too smile and if they are sad, we also go deep in sadness and frustration and we have, actually no hope that we shall survive. We know that in India we take the patient to the hospital only when we are not having any hope.

So these pressures, these tensions and these worries are but natural and we cannot avoid these worries and tensions and therefore, we should bear all this and take these things as a course of life. We shall have to develop a strong will to face all these contingencies of life because these are usual and customary in our life. We must be preparing ourselves for these contingencies of life and at least the people of India and people in other developing countries must be hard to face such types of contingencies in life.

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Dr Sneh Khemka, Bupa International’s Medical Director, tells you what to look out for if you need hospitalisation overseas.

Being admitted to hospital

1. Choose the best option

If you’re being admitted as an emergency or taken by ambulance, you often won’t have much choice in where you go.  However, if you can exercise choice, it’s important to select the best hospital for you – does it have the right services (eg a CT scanner), is it clean, can the staff speak your language etc?

2. Let your insurer know

Once there, you should let your insurer know you have been admitted as soon as possible so you can ensure you are covered for all treatments that you receive.  If you can let them know before you attend, they may even be able to point you to the best facility in town.

3. Ask questions

Don’t be afraid to ask questions that may seem difficult – it is important that you know what is happening to you, and instead of being offended, medical staff have a duty of care to ensure you are kept up to speed with what’s going on.

4. Provide the right information

You will be asked for your demographic details (age, sex, next of kin etc) and your medical history.  It is a good idea to carry with you a list of previous operations and treatments you may have had, along with a list of medications and allergies.

You will also be asked about how you are going to pay for treatment.  Without insurance, it can be frighteningly expensive, so you’re best to be covered and you can give them the contact details for your company who should then be able to settle your bills.

What to look out for?

5. Location is important

Hospitals do not have the same standards of care everywhere. Depending on which country you are in, and whether you are in a big city or the rural countryside, hospitals can differ greatly.  Many developed countries will have a government regulation committee that will inspect all hospitals to make sure there is a minimum standard of care.  However, in other areas it is completely unregulated.

Generally speaking, hospitals in developing countries have less regulation and lower standards than those in developed nations.  Sub-saharan Africa is notorious for its underfunded and understaffed institutions and parts of South America have poor legacies for the state of healthcare.  However, South East Asia and the Indian subcontinent have some of the best hospitals in the world.  It’s all a matter of choosing the right place.

6. Cleanliness is next to…

As a general rule of thumb, cleanliness is a good indicator of the level of safety in a hospital.  Word of mouth is also a good way of gauging a hospital’s reputation.  However, if you are insured with someone like Bupa International, you will more reliably be able to find out which are the good and bad places, as we have experience and check hospitals around the world for quality.

7. Consider benefits of private vs. public hospitals

Private hospitals are generally as good as public hospitals and in many places often better.  Private hospitals tend to have better funding and can therefore afford better equipment and facilities.

However, public hospitals may offer a range of services that private ones cannot, including intensive care units, emergency cardiac interventions and a wider range of staff for paramedical services such as physiotherapy and radiology.

What role does my insurer play?

8. Returning home is not necessarily the best option

It is not always the best option to medivac you home, Bupa International runs a full medivac servicec called WMA (Worldwide Medical Assistance).  WMA get calls from all over the world, and because we know the local services and hospitals, we can often find you excellent treatment without having to fly you back home, meaning you can carry on your trip after treatment.  We may need to send you to a nearby country, but if you need urgent attention, having you in an aeroplane for an extended period is not the best idea.

In determining whether or not to medivac a patient home, we look at all the medical details of the customer, what medical services they are likely to need, and the level of cover that they have purchased.  We also take into account the personal preferences of the customer, and often will pay for a family member to travel with them should there be the need.

Then we look at where will be the best place to send them so they can get the best and quickest access to the treatment they need.

9. Understand the hospital fees and charges

There is an emerging problem amongst certain hospitals that, if incentivised in the wrong way, they are more likely to intervene with a procedure or test which may not be entirely necessary.  This is the case with not only foreign visitors, but local patients as well.

We encourage our customers to let us know in advance of any planned treatment so we can talk through the options with both the patient and the doctor, and ensure that they are acting in a medically sound manner, and not just doing things for the sake of a few extra bucks.

For hospital out-patients, you will need to pay the bill when you are discharged and make a claim from your insurer later.  For more serious problems or hospital in-patient admissions, your insurer will liase with the hospital directly about the bill.

Avoiding hospital in the first place

10. Take your own first aid kit

An emergency medical kit always comes in handy, but what you can do with one is limited.  Kits should ideally contain basic painkillers, antiseptic, anti-diarrhoea and rehydration preparations, bandages and plasters.  Customs and prescription laws restrict the amount you can carry around with you.

For any worrying conditions, it is always best to seek expert medical advice – things can be picked up before they develop into major problems and sometimes you need a doctor to give you medications you cannot otherwise access.

If you take any medications, eg insulin, it is essential to keep an adequate supply, and to keep stores in two separate bags in case one is lost. Also, if you are anaphylactic, don’t forget to take adrenaline with you (and give your travelling companion instructions on how to use it).

11.  Use your common sense

The biggest single problem that the traveller will face is dehydration (from diarrheoa and vomiting).  Access to a plentiful supply of rehydration salts and clean drinking water is paramount.

And making sure you’re adequately insured so that not only will your bills be paid, but you’ll have a ‘friend’ that can help you through particularly troublesome times.

September 2008

The Danish businessman and entrepreneur Bjorn Stiedl, who now mainly lives in Paris, has initiated a new charitable organisation, Foundation Ours en Peluche, (“the Teddy Bear Trust”) to raise funding for a more comforting environment when young children are submitted to hospital.

It is the aim to raise enough funding to secure that all children will be receiving a teddy bear when submitted to a Parisian hospital.

Being admitted to a hospital is often a scaring and intimidating experience, especially for a child. Although parents and staff alike do their best to alleviate the children’s anxieties as well as their ailments, they can’t be around them 24/7. And it is often during the small hours of the morning that the children feel most scared and insecure.

Studies have shown that teddy bears have a positive effect on children who are admitted to a hospital. The teddy bear gives the children something safe and secure, and also a “companion” who can support and comfort them on their own level. Furthermore, health workers can explain the child’s illness through the teddy bear. This also alleviated the children’s anxieties.

Therefore giving the children a teddy bear when they are admitted to the hospital for long-term treatment is a very simple and humane way to improve the children’s experience when being in the hospital.

It is Mr. Stiedl’s hope that all formalities can be finalised by January 2009 so that negotiations for delivery of teddy bears with individual hospitals in Paris can commence.

“Hospitals are big and bureaucratic organisations, and implementing new routines and procedures take time”, Mr. Stiedl says “Issues regarding safety and health such as fire proofing, hygiene, etc. is of course also issues that has to be dealt with”

Bjorn Stiedl continues; “When we have an overview of the level of interest among the various clinics and hospitals, and when we approximately know how many teddy bears we have to hand out on a yearly basis, we will commence the fundraising.”

Bjorn Stiedl has already developed a model for the funding. “I will arrange for successful restaurants to add 1 Euro per bill they hand out during lunch and dinner service. It is entirely voluntary for the restaurant guest if he wants to pay the 1 Euro teddy bear donation. If the restaurant guest doesn’t want to pay, fair enough, 1 Euro will immediately be deducted from the bill, but I’m convinced that this will be a very small minority”.

As soon as all formalities are in place, staff will be engaged to engage participating Parisian restaurants.

Are you looking for a hospice which will take care of all your medical needs under one roof?

Come to Jordan Hospital, which guarantees you complete service on 24X7 basis with highly trained medical staff. The hospital boasts of as much as 250 beds that are supplied by unique medical facilities that can be discovered nowhere else. The hospital is found in Amman-Jordan and is the crown jewel among all the hospitals in the country. The hospital was built under Royal patronage in the year 1993 and since then it has served the medical community with the most complicated cures and surgical procedures to some of the most disturbing ailments in the history of humankind.

The specialty hospital has received various notable awards and commendation among which the King Abdullah II award for Excellence is worth a mention. The Joint Commission International for their work in the medical field has authorized the Jordan hospital. The hospital makes good use of the resources made available to it by providing better health care answers to the complete community. This infirmary specializes in many sides of medical science, thereby giving the patients the chance to get a complete treatment under the supervision of experts in different fields of medicine.

The nursing office of the Jordan hospice provides competent and familiar nursing care to the patients. The nursing staff dare extremely well trained at the best institutes and they have the expertise to take care of all sorts of patients. The infirmary strives by its dedication towards complete medical therapy by performing quality management in all of the departments on a constant basis.
The hospital also provides hotel room for relatives accompanying the patients and the list of comforts and care offered by the staff is endless. The hospital also provides regular courses and trainings for their workers to raise their expertise. The cost of treatment in the Jordan hospitalis according to the tariff authorized by the ministry of health and medical association and the complete billing process is computerized, leaving little e room for errors.

All the equipments, medicines and dispensable articles used to treat the patients are of the highest quality and go along with world standards. The Jordan surgery does not go into the back foot completely serving the patients ; instead, they prefer to give the very best hospital therapy to each patient who comes to their door.

Each and each department of the hospital is computerized and provided with the latest gadgets and execs trained to handle them. All of the departments’ co-operate with one another to diagnose and cure the infirmities of the patients. The in-patients and the outpatient’s wards have their own pharmacies so the patients can start receiving medications as quickly as the diagnosis is complete.
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