It's a given that in today's healthcare climate, virtually any conversation about specific areas of operation begins―and often ends―with a discussion about money. Hospitals, especially, are under the gun. Some patients are rushed home to avoid the higher costs of a hospital stay, while others who do arrive for extended stays are arriving sicker than in years past. "We have such sick patients in hospitals now," says Luci Power, pharmacy manager for the University of California San Francisco Medical center and owner of consulting firm Power Associates. "Whether it is the HMO concept that they don't hospitalize you until you are absolutely dying or the major advances in the last 20 years in drug therapies that allow people to say at home longer―when the drug therapies are no longer effective, the patients who come to us are very sick."
展开▼
