They didn’t reduce hospitalizations, they gave bonuses if these homes were able to reduce the number of hospitalizations.
That’s how companies get away with shit like this: diffusion of responsibility.
No one made a single decision to let seniors die. Instead there is a whole bunch of small decisions, from the top down, that each on their own seem reasonable. The CEO may have given the order to look for ways to increase profit margins. Someone lower down came up with the idea for ‘performance bonuses’. Someone further down the hierarchy had to come up with a metric to tie these bonuses to, then someone below felt pressured by this to be more hesitant before hospitalizing someone.
In the end you end up with a whole chain of decisions where you can’t really point at anyone who made a truly ‘bad’ decision. Every individual decision can be defended as reasonable, but the end result is the company is behaving like a sociopath. The responsibility is spread out over so many people and watered down that no one really can be held responsible.
My friend died due to bullshit like this.
I’m really sorry for your loss. Such a preventable death must sting beyond what words can express.
If you’d like to write a sort of memorialization, I’m sure we’d all like to get to know a little about your friend through your eyes.
I reposted the one I made on his birthday last year and posted on the anniversary of his death this year.
That’s a beautiful memorial to a wonderful friend. Thank you for pointing me towards it.
Since this was by design and just three obvious only outcome, I would call this fucking murder, not “oopsie woopsie you died”
Who’s the Head Corporate Serial Killer of United Health? Everybody should know his name and his face.
I was so confused at first. Reducing hospitalizations is great if it’s because of better care.
That’s not what it was.
