This puts a whole new spin on what could happen with Medicare For All (Single Payer), eh? It’s also amazing that a publically funded news outlet will come out and say that this is bad
More People Can Access Surgery. That’s Great For Them, Awful For The Planet
Add surgeries to the list of human activities making the climate hotter and more volatile.
“Surgical, obstetric, and anaesthesia care is one of the major contributors to climate change within the health sector,” according to an article published this month in The Lancet scientific journal by doctors and researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. They worry that the climate impact of current surgical practices will get worse as lifesaving procedures become accessible to the 5 billion people around the world, mostly in low- and middle-income countries, who currently can’t get them.
“We do need to get more people surgical care,” says Dr. Aaron Bernstein, co-author of the article and interim director of the Center for Climate Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University. “But if we do it in a model that has been developed in rich countries, it will break the climate — and we can’t afford that.”
So, I guess we’ll have to do surgeries like they do in 3rd world shitholes from now-on, eh?
The article zeroes in on surgical care because it’s the most energy- and waste-intensive specialty in health care. Operating rooms can consume three to six times more energy per square foot than elsewhere in a hospital, according to another Lancet study. That’s because heating, ventilation and air conditioning in operating rooms run on high even when no patients are in them. The article says that if hospitals ventilated operating rooms only when they were occupied, this would significantly reduce energy consumption. (snip)
Bernstein says it’s “absolutely” possible to increase access to surgical care without “breaking the climate,” despite challenges. For example, biomedical devices should be labeled with their energy-efficiency ratings, like refrigerators and TVs are, Wilburn suggests.
Tell you what: let’s practice this on Believers in anthropogenic climate change, especially the grand high poobahs. Oh, and we can start with the people at the Lancet. They’re good with, right?
“Sometimes wealthy countries tend to think that our approach is best,” Sheehan says, “when oftentimes, there is something to be learned from countries that are working with [fewer] resources.”
Right, right, because we’d all rather practice medicine like in 3rd world shitholes, right?
Tut-tut there Teach. You know it’s only our racist white supremacism that makes our medicine better and more expensive. We don’t deserve that because “we didn’t build that”. We should, as Elwood would say, have “equal” medicine. The filthy privileged white devils in America are no better and deserve no better treatment than the tutsoons of Kenya.
Teach left out the relevant discussion… Little if any of the waste impacts patient care. Teach, of course, turns it into a discussion about 3rd World Shitholes (i.e., non-whites) and Kye follows along.
The article zeroes in on surgical care because it’s the most energy- and waste-intensive specialty in health care. Operating rooms can consume three to six times more energy per square foot than elsewhere in a hospital, according to another Lancet study. That’s because heating, ventilation and air conditioning in operating rooms run on high even when no patients are in them. The article says that if hospitals ventilated operating rooms only when they were occupied, this would significantly reduce energy consumption.
Operating rooms also produce 20% to 30% of a facility’s waste, by some estimates, and a third of its biohazard waste, which must be disposed of specially.
The use of certain anesthetic gases, such as nitrous oxide and desflurane, is another major source of greenhouse gases in operating rooms, according to the article. Anesthetics that are injected instead of inhaled, on the other hand, leave a minimal carbon footprint.
“The easiest thing we can do is stop wasting so much,” says Dr. Jodi Sherman, associate professor of anesthesiology and of epidemiology in environmental health sciences at Yale University. “We waste a tremendous amount.”
Besides wasting energy, Sherman says, there are many other inefficiencies in the health care system contributing to climate change. For example, nearly $3 billion in chemotherapy drugs were being thrown out in the U.S. annually because the single-use vials held more drug than was required, according to a 2016 Washington Post article.
Additionally, too many tools and devices are unwrapped in operating rooms to have them available in case they’re needed, says Bernstein, who is also a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital. The packaging is discarded, as are any disposable tools, even if they aren’t used, because they’re no longer sterile.
Teach left out the relevant discussion… Little if any of the waste impacts patient care. Teach, of course, turns it into a discussion about 3rd World Shitholes (i.e., non-whites) and Kye follows along.
Once again, Jeffery displays his ignorance. In a hospital, everything impacts patient care.
The article zeroes in on surgical care because it’s the most energy- and waste-intensive specialty in health care. Operating rooms can consume three to six times more energy per square foot than elsewhere in a hospital, according to another Lancet study. That’s because heating, ventilation and air conditioning in operating rooms run on high even when no patients are in them. The article says that if hospitals ventilated operating rooms only when they were occupied, this would significantly reduce energy consumption.
Operating rooms also produce 20% to 30% of a facility’s waste, by some estimates, and a third of its biohazard waste, which must be disposed of specially.
The use of certain anesthetic gases, such as nitrous oxide and desflurane, is another major source of greenhouse gases in operating rooms, according to the article. Anesthetics that are injected instead of inhaled, on the other hand, leave a minimal carbon footprint.
Besides wasting energy, Sherman says, there are many other inefficiencies in the health care system contributing to climate change. For example, nearly $3 billion in chemotherapy drugs were being thrown out in the U.S. annually because the single-use vials held more drug than was required, according to a 2016 Washington Post article.
Additionally, too many tools and devices are unwrapped in operating rooms to have them available in case they’re needed, says Bernstein, who is also a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital. The packaging is discarded, as are any disposable tools, even if they aren’t used, because they’re no longer sterile.
Jeffery throws a lot of data around without any citation. One presumes he would be prepared to go under the knife with all this corner-cutting.
Another reason why Trump needs to win this thing.
Shithead typed: throws a lot of data around without any citation.
It was all in Teach’s citation. He just left all the good stuff out. You should have read it.
Shithead typed: Trump needs to win this thing.
Oh sweetie. Poor, poor sweetie. You still think Lame-Duck Donnie wasn’t fired. That’s so precious.
Oh sweetie. Poor, poor sweetie. You still think Lame-Duck Donnie wasn’t fired. That’s so precious.
Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.†The purpose is to sow anger.
He takes all his ques and all his info from commies. Alinsky is the least of the liars problems.
To sow anger is to sow hate. All they have is hate.
Given how socialized medicine has rationed patient care everywhere it’s been tried, there’s no need to worry. Now an environmental impact statement will have to be filed with the Department of Health and Human Services to preapprove all surgical procedures.
Normal turn around time: six weeks.
The only reason Kye is still breathing is because of the socialized medical care
Say Kye if you still believe Trump is going to win bet on Predictit they will give you 10-1 odds
The only reason I’m still breathing is because of socialized medical care? How do you figure that? I have Aetna. Beside ALL insurance can be considered a “socialist” construct since all insurance is based on all the policy holders paying in to cover each others claims.
You really don’t get it do you? Just because a policy requires cooperation among people does not make the whole effort socialist. Red China is socialist, but they do capitalist things to support the socialist regime. Cuba is socialist but their leaders make billions through capitalism. Same with N. Korea and Venezuela. You seem enthralled with the fake idea of “true socialism”.
I’ll take your bet on Trump if you move to a socialist utopia like N. Korea.
Besides, they are now CHEATING ON THE RECOUNTS. The Democommies are incorrigible.
***A report from a Republican monitoring the manual recount of the presidential election vote in Georgia said one of the counters was erroneously giving votes to Joe Biden that were cast for President Donald Trump.
Hale Soucie is a Republican National Committee monitor who’s watching the recount in Cobb County, according to Townhall.com. He was described by The New York Times in a Monday article as being with a group that was comprised of “concerned citizens of a conservative bent.â€
“Despite the careful and meticulous process he was watching,†The Times reported, Soucie “remained concerned that the count was corrupt.â€
Here was the quote The Times pulled from him: “This is kind of just, you know, a show,†he said.***
“So, the second person was supposed to be checking it, right. So, three times in three minutes she called out Biden,†Soucie said.
“The second auditor caught it and she said, ‘No. This is Trump.’ Now, that’s just while I’m standing there.â€
“So, does the second checker catch it every time? But this lady, three times in three minutes, from 2:09 to 2:12, she got three wrong,†he continued.
This was at Table 17. When he went to Table 18, he found they were doing the same thing.
“So, I go and report it. They say, ‘Oh, we’ll talk to the [Cobb County] election officials.’ … They talk to her. And so I come back by again in a few minutes and she’s not doing it after I’ve talked to her,†Soucie said
The great thing about Freedom is that hospitals don’t need government permission to save money in ways that don’t impact patient care. I’m pretty sure they would already be doing this. In socialist countries, hospitals, as well as every other industry, are at the whims of no-nothing bureaucrats and daily releases from the Good-Idea fairy.