Before a recent hospital visit, Christine Link requested that her healthcare providers wear masks because of her autoimmune disease and medications that further suppress her immune system. A phlebotomist initially refused her request, leaving her feeling “shocked, scared.”
Escalating her concern to the Mass General Brigham’s patient advocacy office, she received this response: “While the request by a patient to an employee to wear a mask is not an ADA-related accommodation, it is a patient-centered and trauma informed best practice, and we encourage patients to make this request with the provider who is ordering the testing. The provider would determine if it would be in the patients’ best interest clinically to have staff wear a mask while interacting with the patient. Then they would need to communicate the decision to all staff providing services to the patient, such as phlebotomy staff.”
The patient advocate’s response left Link feeling, “foolish for thinking that Mass General Brigham would actually care enough to follow the law regarding reasonable accommodations. Instead I was gaslit about my needs.” She added, “Each time I have an in-person appointment, I have to go through being made to feel as less than any other human being as a result of my disabilities, bullied, and forced into unsafe care as a condition of getting the healthcare I need.”
Link is not alone. She is one of the many patients who reached out to tell me about how the refusal of this simple ADA accommodation is ruining their lives. One of the most worrisome bits of fallout is that many patients now fear they will get Covid-19 in the hospital or medical office. They are delaying getting medical care, including cancer screening and infusions of drugs, putting off vital appointments. This risks seriously damaging their health.
Fuck this piece of shit country.
When it's pointed out that covid transmission in hospitals is needlessly killing a lot of people, a common response I see online is: "They were going to die of something, anyway."
We'll ban peanuts on a flight if someone is allergic to them, but won't do shit to stop covid transmission among the most sick and vulnerable people in our society, because scumbag doctors and nurses don't want to be inconvenienced. It's truly sickening.
Give it 5 years
in 10 it'll be mandatory peanuts on every flight to hunt down the weak
Boeing unveils the new PB-757, a plane made entirely out of peanut butter.
Surprisingly, it results in less deaths than the 737 Max.
Sir, a second peanut has hit the vasoconstrictors
you mean mandatory cyanide pills to hunt down the non-cyanide-resistant (this is basically what covid is since it's a bioweapon and not a normal virus)
"So were you"
pulls out minecraft shovel
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