Behind the wheel of a silver Subaru wagon was
Adam Knapp, a 30-year-old schizophrenic 2,400 miles from home. Eighteen
days earlier, he had slit his wrists and swallowed two bottles of pills
in a suicide attempt. Three hospitals admitted him afterward. None kept
him, and now he had taken off in a car alone." The story continues with him driving and eventually U- turning into oncoming traffic and slamming into unemployed medical clerk and her sister. All three died at the crash. The reason this is business related is because this incident lead to a look at the failing health care in America. They say that because of all this new medication that hospitals have available they can shorten the stay in the hospital which leads to overlooked problems.
The result: greater relapse and more patients
released prematurely doing harm to themselves and others, according to
20 psychiatric experts interviewed by Bloomberg News. A 2008 Canadian
report linked shorter stays to higher rates of readmission for
schizophrenics, and a 2005 study of U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs
hospital psychiatric patients connected them to higher suicide rates.
“Patients under these conditions get into more
trouble, become more gravely ill, and some die,” said Ira Glick, chief
of the Schizophrenia Clinic at the Stanford University School of
Medicine.
