Discussion on:

Focal Point intends to reinvent the hospital

Hospitals are meant to care for the sick , they are not community centres. There is already a battleground raging around super bugs - mixing retail, daycare and Cdif boggles the mind. Now imagine what that facility might look like in case of pandemic and how much more quickly contagions could spread in such a model. Hospitals have always been meant to be acute care facilities and separate from primary care needs. If we begin to go too far along the path of community and primary care then they will no longer be able to accept the very sick/contagious patients and will lose that role and then where do we go when we need that acute care? We cannot turn our hospitals into community centres - that was never the intent. If we want to develop primary care community based models then we should proceed with that but this is not the purpose of an acute care hospital.

While I think the article is good, and community involvement is also good - - there is so much more that hospitals could do IN THEIR FIELD of expertise instead of branching so far out. Stick to what you know and then improve on that. People need GOOD care and that's what concerns them the most in a hospital environment.

There was a recent article in COnsumer Reports about hospitals with high incidents of staph infections and return visits to the hospital, and that report was far more interesting.

ANother thing about some hospitals is that they are going bloodless during surgery. "Bloodless Surgery" Transfusion Alternatives" is where medicine is heading. See http://www.squidoo.com/blood-transfusion-alternatives