Getting mad about healthcare disparities

At our school, there's a well-known CBS news clip about Dr. Bob Paeglow, who serves the Arbor Hill community in the broke part of Albany, in which the TV anchors conclude by calling Dr. Bob "a saint." Well I don't think we should call someone a saint for seeing poor patients; I think we should be outraged that not everybody is doing it.

This morning we had an introduction to rehab medicine, an important and underutilized field of medicine helping some of the most disadvantaged and underserved patients out there, the impaired and disabled. The lecture was great and highlighted physical limitations that health care providers often overlook. If anticipated, these limitations can be addressed and mitigated, sparing a patient with a disease from experiencing impairment or disability. The problem is that many of these interventions require drastic changes to the patient's environment (house renovations, special vans, etc.), which cost money and are often not covered by insurance. Such changes have been known to bankrupt even the insured.

In contrast, at lunch I attended a guest lecture by an alumnus whose practice is situated in a homeless shelter in San Antonio, Texas. Ninety percent of her patients are uninsured (and Texas has rejected a Medicaid expansion) -- as a result, she described with pride learning to manage chronically ill patients on the bare minimum.

Why do we spend so much time learning about ideal healthcare when most people--and yes, I need some stats here--don't have access to the ideal?

Courtesy Physicians for a National Health Plan, www.pnhp.org