Some rules are necessary
I often disagree with Dr. William Bezdek. I also often disagree with many nonsensical government regulations. Time and again, I have complained about some bureaucrat harassing us for not dotting i's and crossing t's in paperwork. Many regulations have significantly increased our cost of doing business. Hospital administrators and compliance officers are afraid -- so they overshoot. Lawyers often take these regulations and bring unnecessary lawsuits. However, some sensible regulations must be in place to protect patients and physicians.
While Bezdek makes a good point about regulations in a general sense in his Jan. 25 Community Voices piece, "The government agency that's holding our hospitals hostage," I disagree with the example of angiography cited. First, we must take every possible precautions to avoid any infection. Angiography procedures are invasive, surgical and imaging procedures where we insert catheters into the body and check sensitive organs like the heart or brain, and precautions must be taken to limit infection as well as radiation exposure to patients and providers. A proper gown, mask and scrubbing is a must, and there must be oversight to ensure that old-school physicians like Bezdek are complying with the rules. If not, he could be tracking infection from one patient to other, and God forbid someone gets a MRSA endocarditis because of a negligent doctor.
I can cite a number of examples where agencies and lawyers are flat-wrong and we are harassed. However, in many procedures when we are dealing with live human beings, precautions must be taken to prevent injury to patients.
Dr. Girish Patel
Bakersfield
