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Worry-free warranty
US hospital offers guarantee to ensure better patient care from doctors
By Eugene Wee
May 20, 2007
YOUR new car has one.
So do your new TV sets, DVD players and iPods. Even some condos have them.
Indeed, most consumer goods these days come with some sort of warranty.
If they stop working, take them back, and the manufacturer will repair them for free.
But what about medical care?
It can cost as much as a car. And doctors are human, so mistakes will be made.
The only difference is, if we can't afford repairs for our car or TV set, we can do without them.
The same can't be said for subsequent medical care if a procedure goes wrong with your heart or kidney.
While the idea of having warranties for medical care seems logical, it's surprising that more hospitals are not offering it.
That's why a US hospital is experimenting on providing such a warranty to learn if it can encourage hospitals and doctors to provide higher-quality care.
The New York Times reports that the Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pennsylvania, is testing a patient-care programme that essentially guarantees the workmanship of its doctors.
For a flat fee, surgery patients are assured 90 days of follow-up treatment at no additional charge should complications arise from their surgery.
It's surprising that we, as consumers, have not made a bigger fuss about warranties for procedures on which our life could depend on.
Yet we would haggle for hours with a salesman over adding an additional year of warranty for a new home theatre system.
One US medical expert said that in no other field would consumers tolerate the frequency of error that is common in medicine.
Singapore would do well to study if adopting warranties for medical procedures here would work, especially since it hopes to become a hub for medical tourism.
Thailand is already attracting hordes of foreigners seeking medical procedures at prices up to half what some Singapore hospitals charge.
Surely, the promise of warranties for procedures done here would entice many to choose quality over price?
In the US, the sale of cars from South Korean maker Hyundai, which was once voted as having the worst-quality cars there, jumped almost four-fold after it offered a radical 10-year warranty for its engines.
Having similar warranties for healthcare here might also help avoid cases like the one involving Madam Sandar Aung, who flew her mother from Myanmar to Singapore for a stent operation in 2004.
What was meant to be a two-day stay costing $15,000 turned into a 344-day stretch costing $537,000 after complications arose during surgery.
She refused to pay, and the hospital sued. But the court took her side after ruling earlier this year that she was only liable for the estimated costs the hospital initially gave her.
Unfortunately, offering a warranty for surgery may not be as clear-cut as offering one for a TV set.
If a TV set breaks, it can be replaced.
Not so with human lives.
That's why it is hard to give any kind of guarantee on the work done on something as fragile as the human body.
Offering warranties for procedures could open doctors and hospitals up to more lawsuits from patients who suffer from complications that are entirely beyond the control of doctors.
The cost of medical care may even go up due to the higher medical insurance premiums doctors may have to pay to shield themselves from ensuing legal battles.
Having warranties for operations here will be a boon to patients and Singapore's ambitions of being a medical hub. But we may need to see how the experiment at Geisinger pans out before making that move.