The story of Belinda Hoy reminded me once again of the inequitable distribution of our health resources.
After thousands of dollars have been spent providing state of the art medical technologies for 32 days in the Intensive Care Unit, there is a sudden reduction in services for her rehabilitation.
We provide resources to save a person’s life in an Intensive Care Unit. This is regarded as an important health service. The same level of commitment, however, is not provided to support people after their discharge from the high-tech place.
A patient’s mother once describe the three stages of care for her head injured son as: “intensive care, no care, then don’t care”. Yes, Mr Rosenfeld, this certainly needs to be improved.
First published as a letter in the The Age on 13 January 1994