Another Cause of Physician Burnout? Being Forced to Unequal Patient Care For Undocumented Immigrants

Pre-Med & Medical School Careers in Medicine
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https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/21/613115383/another-cause-of-doctor-burnout-being-forced-to-give-immigrants-unequal-care

Here’s the study references in the news report:
http://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/2682329/clinicians-perspectives-providing-emergency-only-hemodialysis-undocumented-immigrants-qualitative-study

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One of the reasons I love pediatrics, and more especially the Pediatric ICU, is that I don’t have to consider this when I’m taking care of my patients.

There are plenty of other things that cause burnout in the PICU, but this isn’t one of them.

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@Bigredmed: does your hospital just fund all the care for undocumented kids, then? I’ve dealt with a few undocumented pediatric patients, and we’ve generally had similar issues to adults in that we can’t get them any kind of insurance, which often delays discharge for quite a while. One patient would have been able to go home with a PICC and in-home nursing, but instead spent three months in the hospital. All of this was charity care.

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I’m not personally privy to such details, and have not yet been told that I can or cannot do something based on insurance status or other sort of status. But being in the ICU affords a degree of necessity that the regular floor does not.

I suspect that it gets written off, and the ICU generates enough income that it’s not an issue on our bottom line, so people tend not to pay much attention.

In residency, the children’s hospital very much broadcasted that inability to pay was not an issue. In fellowship, the institution was courting visits from Saudi Princes and the like, so it there were other methods in play.