Y 4. Sci 2: 100/105 THE QUALITY OF MEDICAL CARE: GS RECORD ONLY: HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES, OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY ONE HUNDREDTH CONGRESS For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY ROBERT A. ROE, New Jersey, Chairman GEORGE E. BROWN, JR., California TIM VALENTINE, North Carolina LEE H. HAMILTON, Indiana C. THOMAS MCMILLEN, Maryland JIMMY HAYES, Louisiana DAVID E. SKAGGS, Colorado PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania GEORGE J. HOCHBRUECKNER, New York MANUEL LUJAN, JR., New Mexico CLAUDINE SCHNEIDER, Rhode Island DON RITTER, Pennsylvania SID MORRISON, Washington RON PACKARD, California ROBERT C. SMITH, New Hampshire HARRIS W. FAWELL, Illinois D. FRENCH SLAUGHTER, JR., Virginia ERNEST L. KONNYU, California CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland CONTENTS Ms. Sondra Bauernfeind, Founder Victims Against Medical Abuse; Ms. Marian Stackhouse, Sullivan County Coroner; Mrs. Elaine O'Rourke, Secretary, Stop Hospital And Medical Errors (SHAME); Louis Krieger, Chairman, New York City Legislative Committee, American Associa- tion of Retired Persons; Ms. Esther Lustig, Director, External Affairs and Development, Lexington Center for the Deaf and Hearing Im- paired; Dr. Lowell S. Levin, Professor, Yale University School of Medi- cine, and author, "Medicine on Trial" Dr. David Axelrod, Commissioner of New York State Department of Dr. Jane E. Sisk, Senior Associate at the Office of Technology Assess- William Toby, Regional Administrator, Health Care Financing Adminis- Dr. Charles D. Sherman, President, Medical Society of the State of New York; Dr. Juanita K. Hunter, President, New York State Nurses Asso- ciation; Ms. Suzanne G. Martin, Assistant Vice President, Medical Case Mix and Utilization Management, New York City Health and Hospital Corporation; Ms. Carolyn Scanlan, Executive Vice President, Hospital Association of New York State; Ms. Carol Dye, Executive Director, APPENDIXES II. SHAME: When our healers do the hurting: Losing "patients" with the THE QUALITY OF MEDICAL CARE: MONDAY, JUNE 6, 1988 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, Washington, DC. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 305A, 26 Federal Plaza, NY, Hon. James Scheuer, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding. Present: Representative George Hochbrueckner The CHAIRMAN. Good morning. The Subcommittee on Natural Resources, Agricultural Research and Environment will come to order. Today we're going to take testimony and answer some questions on a subject that's critically important to every citizen, namely the quality of medical care that they receive and what they can do about it. How we can be more responsible for the outcomes of our health care when we have an encounter between a patient and a doctor, patient and a nursing home and patient in a hospital. Our society has given a tremendous emphasis to development of new technology, very sophisticated medical technology for quadruple heart plants and bypasses, for organ transplants, for CAT scanners that now substitute for surgery-all kinds of sophisticated treatments and drugs and chemicals that were unknown as little as 5 or 10 years ago. But yet little information-and little effort has been made to use high technology or even intermediate appropriate technology to make available to health consumers, that is you, me, every one of us-when we need to have access to a doctor or a nursing home or a hospital, where little effort has been made by society to get us the information that we urgently need in making these critical decisions about health care providers for doctors, the hospitals, the nursing homes that so vitally affect our future. As I say, we are inundated, our society is with consumer information about cars, about washing machines, hair dryers, dishwashers, lawn mowers, but very little information about the most important consumer choice we will be making in the course of our lifetime, that is decisions about selecting health care providersthe doctors, the nurses, the nursing homes, the hospitals who are providing us with health care at a very critical point in our lives. (1) |