More tongue clucking about the cost of medical supplies: why do veterinary supplies cost so much less?
The other day at my home hospital (which I love and think does a great job of controlling costs and treating patients appropriately) I was sitting around with the intensive care unit nurses and discovered some more irksome facts about how much things cost in hospitals. I had just learned how to place a PICC line (peripherally inserted central catheter) from a nurse anesthetist. When a person is critically ill it is important to have access to the blood stream in such a way as to allow lots of fluid to go in quickly or to make sure that medications that can be irritating to small veins (like potassium and blood pressure support medications) get where they are going without causing damage. That means that a catheter (an IV) needs to go into a central vein. It can go by way of a large vein in the neck or upper chest (the internal jugular vein or subclavian vein) or it can start in a smaller vein in the arm; that catheter is a PICC line. PICC lines can get clotted off, because they are lon...