Mooternity suites vs. regular hospital rooms

My dad is in the hospital for a few days after back surgery. He is in a very crowded, double-occupancy, old, run-down room, and this is at the best hospital in town. The other day I got off the elevator on the wrong floor and noticed it was the Mooternity floor. I'd seen ads about these palacial, luxurious rooms before. Good GOD. Very homey, single-occupancy, warm colors, paneling, artwork, etc. etc. More like a hotel room than a hospital.

It INFURIATES me that sluicing moos are pampered like royalty this for a "condition" they CHOSE to undergo, while the truly sick people are shoehorned into cramped, depressing cubicles.

To add to my misery, when I went to go home I had to wait for a few minutes in the valet parking area of the hospital, which just happens to be near the Mooternity Clinic. My GOD. I was surrounded on ALL sides by gestating moos and their spermdonors, all mooing and lowing about how many weeks they were, boy or girl, names, etc. etc. I felt absolutely sick to my stomach to be in such close proximity to these baby vessels who were all very near spewing their DNA dumplings/resource suckers upon the world. DEPRESSING.

The "birthing suites" that I have seen rival any decent 2-3 star hotel with facilities, decor, and privacy. They also have accomodations for hubby or baybee daddy to sleep over as well, if he wishes. However, the other rooms only have what amounts to a curtain separating the two patients and many of them don't even have tubs or showers. I have also noticed that they will make patients wait for hours and hours for a bed or room, even if they have a serious illness and desperately need to be in bed and on a myriad of IV fluids, but if a preggo waddles up it's presidential treatment all the way. They also will NOT put anyone other than a preggo in one of those rooms regardless if there are ten empty beds, but don't even give it a second thought to put a stroke patient on the childrens' oncology ward for a time if there are no beds available.

I know, this infuriates me, as well. The sick people and ones recovering from injury are the ones who should have the nice, palacial suites. Let the cows give birth in the fucking boiler room for all I care.

The new suites at the local hospital, have hot tubs and memory foam beds.

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Ha, well they'd sew their twats shut if they could only see what a British NHS birthing ward looks like. Think Florence Nightingale in the Crimea, with two rows of bed after bed after bed just a couple feet apart, nothing dividing them (unless someone starts puking or dying, then they rush over and put a cheerfully-coloured rag of a cloth curtain round the bed til the person is, er, stable). NO privacy. Wipe-clean vinyl covered foam mattresses. Sprog gets parked up in a plastic box at the end of each bed. Everything quite filthy and spattered with unidentifyable fluids dried to the surfaces. I can imagine the bed's still warm from its last occupant when the new mummy's rolled in on a gurney. Imagine the cacophony of human noise in there 24 hours a day. And the fucking visitors waddling in, 60 of 'em a day, in their street clothes and dog-shit shoes, viruses and bacteria hanging off their faces, shouting and hollaring because they're so haaaaappy. I won't even describe the slop that turns up for meals.
Admittedly about 10 years ago when a colleague dropped her sprog at the Chelsea & Westminster NHS hospital in west London, they did give her the option of a birthing pool, which she accepted, but then she didn't use because she thought -- a bit paranoid -- "what if they didn't change the water from the last woman?". When the kid came out and she was wheeled into the 'ward', she took an exhausted nap for 2 hours, woke up, took a look around at the conditions, put her clothes on, grabbed her kid and went home. A nurse turned up the next day (yes at least they do home visits here), checked everything out and that was that.

Most NHS hospitals are like what Americans refer to as 'County' -- the publicly-funded county hospitals where you take your chances and the medical staff policy is to treat 'em and street 'em.

The private hospitals in the UK, though, are like Intercontinentals. That's why anyone with any sense of self-preservation here has private medical insurance on top of the NHS coverage.

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"The death of creativity is a pram in the hallway"
- Cyril Connolly

i agree amethyst. not to mention the food,

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Lord, what fools these mortals be!
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Amethyst, that's how it should be here, maybe it would deter some of these bitches from breeding so damned much.

Those spawning moos are treated like queens because they are hatching a fresh crop of pure, 100% perfect, unblemished, rosy pink, blue-eyed, golden-curled little heirs to the fantasy FUTURE!

While the sick patients can just go to hell because they're all broken down, growing old, and everything.=P

OMG Amethyst! I had no idea that NHS hospitals were like our "county" hospitals. Last year we had a woman who went untreated in the ER at a county hospital for at least day or longer, until she finally just lay on the floor curled up in a ball as employees and patients just stepped over her until, while, and after she died. The main problem we have here with these medicaid whores is that they DON'T get prenatal care (even though it's free and comparable care to the PAYING customers) and they wait until their water breaks and then show up in the ER. Here, NO emergency can be denied or transfered if it's considered life threatening, which of course gushing out a baybee is thought to be. They do that shit because they want to deliver in the best hospitals, so they bide their time and show up at nice, clean, private hospitals and get treated like royalty, at least to their faces. Unless there are complications, I don't know why they can't just squat it out at home like women did for centuries.

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kidlesskim
They do that shit because they want to deliver in the best hospitals, so they bide their time and show up at nice, clean, private hospitals and get treated like royalty, at least to their faces. Unless there are complications, I don't know why they can't just squat it out at home like women did for centuries.

They SHOULD squat it out at home or out in the fields like women did for centuries. I have said before that NO repugnancy-related treatment, childbirth, or postnatal care should be covered by health insurance. It is an ELECTIVE PROCEDURE, and one that is always done for selfish, egotistical reasons, no different from cosmetic surgery. The only breeding-related procedures that should be eligible for coverage are those that put an END to it, such as abortions and sterilizations. Of course, anytime I express this opinion in mixed company, I get accused of telling people how to live their lives. Um, I said nothing of the sort, just that if you want to breed, YOU fucking pay for it. It's no different from if you want a Mercedes, don't expect me to subsidize your unnecessary luxury lifestyle accessory and ego-booster.

As a practicing physician, I will honestly relate to you that it is a risk management and public relations that dictate luxurious birthing suites in most hospitals. Pregnant cows are looking to blame ANYONE for their potentially defective brat, so risk management dictates a comfortable environment free from "stress". ANYTHING that could possibly be blamed for a defective brat (except for moo's own bad pre-natal self-care or shitty genetics) will be mitigated in the name of reducing any potential lawsuit. You also have to factor in the number of nursing directors or managers who are moos themselves and who control the design and implementation of moo-ternity services in the hospital environment. If the breeders were not looking even for the slightest pretext to sue a hospital for a bad moo-ternity outcome, these types of situations would not be required. Having been a member of enough hospital medical staff committees and boards of trustees/directors has taught me that the breeders on the nursing and support staff have far more clout than all other considerations combined.

Many hospitals have gone to all-private rooms for the sake of patient isolation and infection control. However, some insurance carriers and payers will not reimburse for this so some hospitals still retain the double-occupancy room. If there is any potential risk factor for a resistant bug (virus, bacteria or protozoan), the patient can be put into a private room. Infection control procedures, including contact isolation, will then be applied and visitors/family will be limited.

"As a practicing physician, I will honestly relate to you that it is a risk management and public relations that dictate luxurious birthing suites in most hospitals."

That's part of it. The other is that maternity is a HUGE profit center for most hospitals. Unlike most trauma patients, etc, pregnant women can choose the hospital they go to, which means that hospitals are always trying to one-up each other on the luxuriousness of their facilities.

It really has nothing to do with respect for reproduction. It's all about the money.

Bottom line is, this entire country values only youth and anything catering to it or bringing it into the world. If you're an adult, they don't care where you end up. They might as well put your hospital bed in a back alley to make room for more moos.

Hell, even as a teenager I didn't get any special treatment when my lung collapsed. But if I was 5 or maybe a pregnant woman, everyone would have been holding my hand and soothing me. None of that happened with me, except for one nurse. I was left cold and terrified while they decided the best way to insert the chest tube.

Thanks for that explanation, Dr. Dan. As maddening as it is, it does make sense.

I've heard about mooternity being a big profit center for hospitals. I don't get that. Plenty of moos don't have insurance and are breeding on OUR dime, so how are hospitals making much money there? Is it because the cows who do have insurance have a larger percentage (or even all) of their expenses reimbursed by their insurance policies? If so, that makes me angry all over again, because most other conditions and procedures have such limited reimbursement rates. Medicare, for example, dictates that for a laminectomy (the surgery my dad had) the patient must be discharged *within* 24 hours. Patently ABSURD. My dad was in NO shape to go home today. Due to some issues, they are keeping him a couple extra days.

Anything that treats moos with kid gloves, no matter what the reason, makes my blood boil!