Children and Parents Bear Cost of Medical Industry's Broken System

Society has been ignoring pediatric health, and parents and the kids are paying the price for it, the CEO of a pediatric telehealth platform says.

Ellen Dasilva expressed how she had the "unfortunate reality of witnessing" the broken system that has continued to fail parents at an alarming rate.

"I'm constantly reminded of the countless hours parents spend away from work every year to take care of a sick child. I see school closures taking place because 32 percent of the school population has the flu. And I think about the impossible tradeoff parents have to make between getting urgent medical care for an average of $2,032 per visit or feeding their families," Dasilva narrated.

These are all happening because, according to her, the health systems do not find pediatric care profitable and, thus, are curtailing pediatric units and practices.

Income over children's health

The American Academy of Pediatrics estimated that between 2008 to 2018, the pediatric inpatient units shrank by 20 percent. Then the pandemic happened, which exacerbated this trend. Hospitals started converting children's floors into urgent care centers for adults to treat patients with COVID.

And now that the pandemic is almost over, the converted floors were not returned for the children due to economics.

Dasilva declared that the health systems realized that more income is generated on a bed with an elderly patient rather than a child.

As a result, parents in rural areas are now forced to drive across state lines and sometimes for eight full hours to ensure that their kids have consistent medical care, The New York Times reported.

This happens because children's reimbursement rates from Medicaid and CHIP, which covers over 40 percent of American kids, are way lower than adults, Dasilva stated.

Moreover, adults have more expensive tests and procedures, allowing hospitals to earn more.

Overburdened system

As pediatric availability downsizes, cases of children being infected by RSV, flu, and COVID are rising.

Infections were reported to be up over 30 percent this year, resulting in "facing shortages of pediatric formulations of key medicines such as acetaminophen, ibuprofen, amoxicillin, and Tamiflu" for respiratory illness treatment.

According to Fortune, hospital bed shortages and physician fatigue disabled the system to meet parents' demand to care for their children.

Moreover, added to the count of people running to the hospitals are the 20 percent of Americans who delayed some of their medical care due to the pandemic and are now catching up to the healthcare they had set aside. Thus, the system remains to be overburdened.

The burnout physicians are adding more to the broken system, who are now feeling the effects of the three years of ongoing work during the pandemic.

It has been reported that 1 in every 5 physicians plans to resign by the end of 2023.

Dasilva emphasized that the system cannot sustain the "mismatch of pediatrician supply and demand from parents for their sick kids." Thus, with options declining, parents are now forced to turn to more expensive care options like going to urgent care or the emergency room.