When hospital policy makes care less humane: Inside one hospital's ongoing blanket controversy

In an ideal world, healthcare would be a guaranteed right—but under late-stage capitalism in the US, even limited access is shaped by profit motives. Between wildly inflated drug prices, insurance companies denying and delaying care in favor of maximum profit, and hospitals cutting corners to increase patient turnover, the system is rife with issues. 

Profits over patient-centric care

Sometimes the policies of a profit-focused culture can sink to the trivial. One example? A hospital refusing to provide adequate blankets to its patients. According to an Instagram reel shared by Nurse Erica, RN, BC, a professional nurse advocate and career mentor, a major Florida hospital is doing just that. 

“The employees [allegedly] find out from the linen company that delivers the linen,” she said in the reel. “They just refuse to purchase, to buy, to pay for….the blankets. This is a basic human necessity. You have to be warm. It’s also conducive to healing and rest. This isn’t an extra.”

The cost-cutting doesn’t stop at patient comfort. Nurse Erica also noted that an emergency care center in Maryland refused to pay for an eyewash station, despite staff requesting one. Beyond the fact that eye wash stations are necessary for ophthalmic emergencies, Nurse Erica cited instances when patients have weaponized body fluid by throwing it at medical staff—a situation, she rightly says, that would also require an eyewash station. 

The blanket issue isn’t new. A 2022 opinion piece in StatNews^[] by Jay Baruch, MD, a professor of emergency medicine, explored a similar situation, no doubt complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic:

“Meaningful work to repair health care must begin here, by investigating those blanket problems that data and graphs inadequately capture. They might appear simple, but they’re far from simplistic.” Some solutions to the system’s problems, he says, are only an arm’s length away, but the answer lies not in providing blankets but in “recognizing and meeting the basic needs of the humans belonging to those arms: frontline workers who want to deliver compassionate care and patients who, even in a crisis, deserve to receive it.”

Some of these cost-cutting issues are life-and-death in impact. Penn State Health was recently accused by its own employees of persistent instrument sterilization issues. “Operating room staff told administrators multiple times that they believed Penn State Health was prioritizing profits and patient volume over safety, according to a summary of a meeting late last year,” reports Spotlight PA.^[]

“Why not cover it for all persons with diabetes to prevent progression, as well as people at the highest risk of developing diabetes?” he asked. “In other words, failure to put patients first up front can cost the healthcare system much more down the road. However, insurers don’t necessarily take this long-term view. Right now, their short-term outlook takes priority, especially given the current economic climate.” 

Access vs influence

None of these issues exist in a silo. Rather, patient needs are also secondary to outside systems shaped by the interests of the wealthy and powerful.

Only in cases where the patient’s health “deteriorated” en route were pilots allowed to land at the hospital itself. The reason? Noise complaints from the  wealthy neighborhood residents. The new agreement, reports KUOW, doesn’t exactly walk that back.^[] Rather, it still requires the flight path to keep choppers from flying over the Laurelhurst neighborhood, along with other compliance and reporting protocols. 

“If you’re sick enough to come by helicopter to Seattle Children’s, you’re sick enough to land at the hospital and get your care started right away,” Tony Woodward, MD, a physician at the hospital, told KUOW.

An expert takeaway

“A threat to healthcare arises when pressures of capitalism would affect daily decisions regarding the care of patients,” says Timothy S. Trecek, managing partner at Habush Habush & Rottier, and a trial attorney focused on medical mismanagement and malpractice.