‘As Marisol Perez fought for her life in a Texas hospital in autumn 2021, her mother, Alma Salas, sat with her every day praying. Perez, then 42, had such a virulent case of Covid and pneumonia that doctors at St. David’s North Austin Medical Center, an HCA Healthcare facility, had put her on a ventilator and into a coma to try to save her.
St. David’s is one of 182 hospitals in the U.S. and the U.K. operated by HCA Healthcare, the nation’s largest hospital chain. HCA is highly profitable — last year it earned $5.6 billion — and its stock is a Wall Street darling.
As an industry leader, HCA’s practices are followed closely by competitors. But HCA’s profits come at a cost to patients and workers, some of its doctors and employees contend. They have cited severe understaffing and insufficient investment in facilities as having caused harm to patients.
Now, new criticisms are arising related to HCA’s palliative and end-of-life care for patients, according to some physicians and nurses who have worked in its facilities. They say HCA officials press staff to persuade families of ailing patients to initiate such care, as Salas says she experienced with her daughter. Although this can harm patients by withdrawing lifesaving treatments, the push can benefit HCA two ways, the doctors and nurses said, and an internal hospital document confirms. It reduces in-hospital mortality rates, a closely watched quality measure, and can free up a hospital bed more quickly for HCA, potentially generating more insurance reimbursements from a new patient.
This article is based on interviews with six nurses and 27 doctors who currently practice at 16 HCA hospitals in seven states or did so previously. All said their HCA hospitals pushed palliative and end-of-life care in pursuit of better performance metrics. Internal HCA hospital documents and texts between hospital staffers provided to NBC News support these health care professionals’ views.
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Article URL : https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/doctors-say-hca-hospitals-push-patients-hospice-care-rcna81599