Taking the Hell Out of Healthcare Author:F. Nicholas Jacobs Mary was admitted to a tertiary hospital for open heart surgery. The surgery did not go well and had to be repeated the following day. Then her physician placed her in a drug induced coma for 10 days, transferred to a specialty care hospital for a month where she contracted what could have been a terminal infection and was placed on fifteen diff... more »erent medications that had her in a near vegetative state. These drugs had been prescribed by five different, independent physicians who had not checked the necessary drug interaction information. All of this proved, once again, that the system is broken. We are treating organs, not people. As the patient s advocate, we had Mary weaned from the majority of these dangerous and mostly unnecessary drugs, lobbied for her for physical therapy, and helped nurture her back to health. Exactly one year later, she is at her daughter s home and doing just fine.« less