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CABLE WORLD STAFF
Guess again. Some words can hurt almost as much as logs and rocks, although in different ways.
C'mon, 'fess up. You know you wince when you hear ...
Dentist
Government intervention
Downsizing
TCI
Hospital
That last one hooked me mentally, and, at least for a short time recently, physically. What drives me crazy - and it may take only a putt to reach that destination - is that just by adding three letters - I T Y - you inestimably sweeten the word and remove the pain.
Hospitality. That's service. That's a suite thing. That's something you enjoy.
Hospital. That's a dungeon run by cruel jailers.
Hospitals are the last place you want to visit either as a registered guest or a friend. They're populated by doctors who are minor gods and nurses who, while not always worshiping those gods, serve as high priestesses on medicine's altar. Patients, trapped in uncomfortable beds with foul-smelling roommates and gruel that would offend the Count of Monte Cristo, have two options: worship these mortal gods or suffer the consequences of the non-believer - as if they can do much worse than what routine demands.
It doesn't have to be this way - at least not all of it.
Meals, served up by laughing lackeys who rush off to gorge themselves at the nearest burger joint for lunch, are a hospital staple. Doctors, who have spent their lives in medical school primarily to acquire the Mercedes keys jangling in their pockets are a lost cause. They don't have time to teach humanity and good manners in med school. And nurses, having to deal with both doctors and sick people, are, at least partially, excused. For mental health reasons, they have to work off aggression and it's not a good idea to carry that stuff home to the family.
But the thing is, when those sloe-eyed, happy-we'-re-not-here family members run off after 8 p.m. visiting hours end, there's nothing for the patient to do but lay around thinking about disease, foul odors, quarter-pound cheeseburgers and the reality that, when finally asleep, some nurse will come in with a needle and blood pressure gear for a 3 a.m. wake-up call.
Hospitals offer, to abuse a phrase, a captive audience waiting to be had. Surprisingly, someone agrees with me. Ken Van Meter, whose titles with Celerity Inc. and FutureTrak Systems Inc. would consume the allotted word count for this column, thinks someone is missing the boat when it comes to hospitals.
"We think it's one of the stronger markets, longer term," he admits.
Now there's phraseology any hospital patient loves to hear: longer term.
Anyway, as Van Meter continues ...
"First of all, you have patient entertainment. There's nothing to watch in hospitals."
Van Meter sidelines as a master of understatement.
Forgetting for a moment about patient comfort - kind of like doctors and nurses - there are reasons hospitals might want to step into the 21st century of telecommunications. Money and malpractice protection might start that ball rolling
"There's staff and patient training," Van Meter continued. "Why pay a high-paid healthcare worker to show people how to move their elbow up and down? You can do that with interactive video."
That would free those healthcare workers to drive in more needles and intravenous tubes and remove them from the primary area of weakness: patient relations.
"You also have a lot of required training that nobody knows if it's being done or not," he added. "They leave the videotape on the table and say 'Watch this this week and sign the form.'"
Now there's a comforting thought. The people taking care of your ailing body might not actually know what they're doing because they cheated on the homework.
Van Meter thinks a hospital equipped with a server could boost its interactive training program and "everybody can watch it any time they want ... do whatever they need to, and then there's a record of when they viewed it."
That would turn the table on those monitor-watching vultures.
Finally, he suggested something even more radical, something that might actually make a hospital stay almost bearable.
"You can give the patient Internet, which would be really neat," he bubbled. "Kids could e-mail their family or their buddies in school and business. If they're crazy enough to do it while they're in the hospital, (they) can go in and do Internet very easily."
Van Meter's suggestions are needed - at least if my hospital stays are any gauge - and they make sense, especially since they would come in a package that could be charged to the patients at rates that would make AT&T blush. Know why HMO is so close to HBO in the alphabet soup world? They're both pay services, although only one is a premium.
If you're in the hospital, you're already sick and probably worried. Who needs to spend any pain-free time thinking? Mind numbing entertainment is just what this doctor would order, if only he had something more than a journalism degree.
And then hospital and hospitality might actually have something more in common than eight base letters.
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