WWWWF:
A Look at Wichita Falls on the Web

How Doctors Think has really gotten me thinking about the problems faced by those depending on indigent care programs or charity care. Consider this:

More commonly, doctors make what are called attribution errors when patients fit a negative stereotype. Dr. donald Redelmeier of the University of Toronto, who ... studies physician cognition, told me about a case he had recently seen on rounds. Charles Carver was in his seventies, retired from the merchant mrine and living by himself in a small apartment. Over the past months, he had felt fatigued and his belly had begun to swell. When Carver came into the ER, the intern noticed alcohol on his breath, and Carver readily told him that he enjoyed a glass of rum each evening. His legs and feet, as well as his abdomen, were swollen. Carver was unshaven; his clothes were old and frayed. The intern wondered to himself how many days it had been since he bathed. ...

"The intern's plan was to have this boozer sleep it off, give him some mild diuretics, and send him home as quickly as possible."

The guy turned out to have an inherited disease.

More than anything, though, it makes me worry about how folks with little income and likely not living the best of lives can fare in such medical environments. Not that all folks on indigent rolls are slobs, but getting on such programs demand a person have little means. That can easily translate into looking more like the bum bilking the system than the patient needing the best care possible.