Thursday, August 14, 2014

Delay is the Deadliest Form of Denial

In a Guardian piece they recount the fact that due to delays in the NHS approach to dealing with cancer patients that the mortality is excessively higher in some areas than others.

They state:

Thousands of people are dying early of cancer every year because of an "inexcusable postcode lottery" in how quickly the NHS diagnoses and treats the disease, a leading charity warns. Delays mean that cancer patients in some areas of England have up to a 61% higher risk of dying within a year of their diagnosis than those in other places, simply because of where they live. While one in four (24%) of newly diagnosed cancer sufferers in north-east Hampshire and Farnham in Surrey die within a year, 38% of those in the London borough of Barking and Dagenham do so, according to a new Macmillan analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics. The same proportion (38%) of patients also die within a year in five other places – Crawley, Sussex; Newham, east London; Swale, Kent; Vale Royal, Cheshire; and Thanet, Kent.

As we look at the massive complexity under the ACA one expects that we will be seeing the same effects here in the US.

It is not that the care is better or worse it is that there is an overwhelming number of patients and too few physicians.