{"id":1672,"date":"2014-11-16T09:17:19","date_gmt":"2014-11-16T14:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1672"},"modified":"2014-11-16T09:17:19","modified_gmt":"2014-11-16T14:17:19","slug":"ebola-clinical-illness-in-well-described-patients-the-us-healthcare-system-can-only-successfully-handle-a-little-ebola-washingtons-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1672","title":{"rendered":"Ebola Clinical Illness in Well-Described Patients: The US healthcare system can only successfully handle a little Ebola Washington&#8217;s Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/2014\/11\/ebola-clinical-illness-well-described-patients-us-healthcare-system-can-successfully-handle-little-ebola.html\">Ebola Clinical Illness in Well-Described Patients: The US healthcare system can only successfully handle a little Ebola Washington&#8217;s Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 24px 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">Let me start this piece with the bottom line: I want to be clear that patients with Ebola virus disease are sicker, in general, than patients with\u00a0<em style=\"background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; font-style: italic; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">any other medical condition<\/em>,\u00a0<em style=\"background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; font-style: italic; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">in the US or anywhere else.<\/em>\u00a0They are subject to many more serious complications than other patients. They require more care, more lab tests, more procedures, more medical staff than patients with any other disease. (That is, if you are serious about trying to keep them alive.) The US healthcare system will not collapse like Africa\u2019s, but it will be sorely tested by an Ebola outbreak: cracks in an already-overstretched system will become readily apparent, and future patients will not receive the million-dollar care that a carefully controlled handful of patients have gotten, so far.<\/p>\n<p style=\"background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 24px 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">This was part of what I tried to indicate in my\u00a0<a style=\"background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; color: #0066cc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"September 30 post\" href=\"http:\/\/anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com\/2014_09_01_archive.html\" target=\"_blank\">September 30 post<\/a>, in which I pointed out that US community hospitals could not care for Ebola patients. They will never be able to. They lack the containment to do it safely. Only large hospitals can assign enough staff away from other duties. They have no ability to get most labs and X-rays for Ebola patients. \u00a0Finally, who will pay for such high-end care in our profit-driven system? Will your insurance cover Ebola, when insurers have great latitude to reject claims?<\/p>\n<p style=\"background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 24px 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">I have now read detailed accounts of the clinical course of the\u00a0<a style=\"background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; color: #0066cc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"first two US Ebola patients\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMoa1409838\" target=\"_blank\">first two US Ebola patients<\/a>\u00a0(Dr. Brantly and Nancy Writebol) and two African patients treated in\u00a0<a style=\"background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; color: #0066cc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"Frankfurt\" href=\"http:\/\/www.thelocal.de\/20141105\/ebola-patient-improves-in-frankfurt-hospital\" target=\"_blank\">Frankfurt<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a style=\"background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; color: #0066cc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"Hamburg\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMoa1411677\" target=\"_blank\">Hamburg<\/a>\u00a0(one a physician and one an epidemiologist). \u00a0At first, the patient in Frankfurt had eight doctors working on his case.<\/p>\n<p style=\"background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 24px 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ebola Clinical Illness in Well-Described Patients: The US healthcare system can only successfully handle a little Ebola Washington&#8217;s Blog. Let me start this piece with the bottom line: I want to be clear that patients with Ebola virus disease are sicker, in general, than patients with\u00a0any other medical condition,\u00a0in the US or anywhere else.\u00a0They are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[223,232,1170],"class_list":["post-1672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-ebola","tag-ebola-virus","tag-healthcare-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1673,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672\/revisions\/1673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}