The █████ [Outpatient] Center is being sold to RadNet. Officially, [the hospital] is entering into a partnership with RadNet, who’ll give a percentage of profits to the hospital in exchange for being the exclusive service provider for the patients who go to █████. Imagine the mafia seizing control of all the doctor’s offices in a city, briefly offering the poor doctor a 10% cut of the profits before closing the joint down quicker than Speedy Gonzales running for queso Oaxaca, and funneling every single patient in the city to a centralized Dr. Giancana’s office. That’s what RadNet does with radiology and imaging centers.
Hospital management, instead of adequately staffing us here at the hospital and at the █████ Center, instead forces their hospital radiology techs to image not only the emergency, surgery, and inpatient patients, but also outpatients. Two men running around an entire hospital, going from code, to surgery, to STAT ICU, to emergency department patients, and having to somehow, eventually, get to the patients who’ve actually scheduled their radiology procedures. “I got here at 10, I had an appointment at 10!” It’s 11:40. “I’m sorry, I know you came here on time for your appointment, but we were called to the ICU, then we had to assist so-and-so surgeon…” And that just sounds bad to everyone. The outpatient center scheduled patients without actually having clinical staff to attend to them for their appointments. God, even without having to deal with outpatients in a fucking hospital we were understaffed. And they’ve cut us further since the start of COVID-19.
Oh, right. And anyone working at █████ who isn’t a rad tech is being laid off.
If running an outpatient center wasn’t profitable then why’s a big fish like RadNet getting into the game? First of all, management could run that place profitably if they pulled their heads out of their asses and actually had rad techs working the place, and second of all—and this should be first—healthcare shouldn’t be run for profit. Jesus fucking Christ in the ass.
Oh, and while I’m at it. What dumbasses are looking at SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, common psychiatric drugs] and thinking, “Yeah, this is great preventive care for a severe viral infection”? Yeah, fluvoxamine targets a receptor that regulates cytokine production. Modulating the body’s immune response to SARS-CoV-2 so that it doesn’t go batshit insane and pulverize the body’s own organs (cytokine storms) sounds great on paper. But dumping psychotropic drugs that induce long-term epigenetic changes on people’s brains—their emotional, cognitive, and social function—onto someone with a mild cough in the hopes that they won’t need supplemental oxygen afterwards—how fucking moronic can you be? Let’s fuck with patient’s appetites, induce nausea and GI complaints (serotonin transmitters are primarily enteric, transmitters of the gut, not brain—so stomach problems are a huge adverse effect of SSRIs) that can’t be distinguished from nausea and GI complaints caused by COVID (or better yet, add on top of the nausea and vomiting with more nausea and vomiting). Masking potential clinical deterioration in the hopes that you’ll prevent said clinical deterioration. Fan-fucking-tastic.
Everyone needs to get their heads out of their collective asses, shut down schools and all non-essential businesses, give full pay and benefits to everyone because no one should be evicted for losing their job to a fucking plague, cancel rent because there are 16 million more fucking empty houses than homeless people in the first place, and marshal all industry and labor to the production of vital health care materiel and vaccine development and production.
Not propose shit like doping up people with SSRIs and benzos, for fuck’s sake.