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The Golden Rule, the best standard of care

May 03, 2023 - 00:00
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The impending closure of CHI St. Joseph’s MatureWell Lifestyle Center in Bryan has me on another rant about the sad state of health care these days. Add this to local corporate health care facilities leaking doctors like a sieve, patients’ complaints being blown off with disastrous results, and it’s just one more in a long string of disappointing and dangerous malpractices mal meaning “bad” – perpetrated on a vulnerable public. Health care facilities know they compromised the public’s trust during covid and have ramped up the marketing rhetoric but they remain misguided in their concern to adhere to Mission Statements and Values which promote “social justice” and “inclusion” rather than listening, treating and doing no harm.

For more than a year now, I’ve complained that seniors in outlying rural areas were thrown under the bus by CHI when it refused to reopen its wellness centers to the public so seniors could exercise in a safe environment. Now, they’re giving all the Brazos Valley oldies the thumb in the eye. They’re pulling the rug out from under 900 seniors right in the shadow of the Mother Ship! It wasn’t a happy bunch I saw on television, and all 900 are expected to squeeze into St. Joseph’s physical therapy center – good luck with that!

Even worse than CHI’s impact on seniors’ efforts to stay healthy, are the dwindling choices of health care providers across the board. Here in the Brazos Valley, you’d have to live under a rock not to know that doctors are leaving. The ones still here are not accepting new patients and that’s a catastrophe waiting to happen when you look at the growth coming our way.

What really scares me are the true stories of cancer patients not receiving simple diagnostic tests that could have saved their lives, or seeing friends go into a hospital for something that was treatable pre-covid, but now they go in and don’t make it out alive.

Last year, I took Houston Methodist to task in my column for their nauseating damage control ads about respecting their patients and employees and “listening to every voice.” This is the same hospital sued by Dr. Mary Talley Bowden for dismissal over her use of Hydroxychloroquine and the same hospital which attracted nationwide attention by firing its nurses who refused to take the jab with an experimental drug.

It would appear all these corporate entities use the same branding agency because they mimic each other. They all seem to ride the same social justice bandwagon pitching inclusion in their Mission Statements and Values. Given what happened at Houston Methodist, and the indignities perpetrated on people I know, these facilities’ version of inclusion really didn’t mean “celebrate each person’s gifts and voice” or “respect the dignity of all.”

Just 10 short years ago, inclusion in health care actually meant that as a patient, you played a role in how your case was handled. You were expected to understand the options available to you and give informed consent.

I’m just a simple person but it seems to me the ultimate Mission Statement or Value system for a health care facility or a physician would be the Golden Rule. Britannica describes the Golden Rule like this. ‘This rule of conduct is a summary of the Christian’s duty to his neighbor and states a fundamental ethical principle.’

Ethical? Like informed consent, ethics went by the wayside in 2020 and many like Bowden paid a price for holding fast to theirs!

But back to the Golden Rule, just in case you’ve forgotten it or never heard it, you can find it in the Holy Bible in the Book of Matthew, Chapter 7, verse 12 - “In everything, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” When you think about it that really is the best standard of care!

The column represents the thoughts and opinions of Connie Clements. Opinion columns are NOT the opinion of the Navasota Examiner.

Clements is a freelance reporter for the Navasota Examiner and an award-winning columnist.