Australian Ricky Buchanan has written a much-needed report about the issues facing bedbound and homebound people in getting access to medical care. She writes:
“If you are homebound/bedridden and you live in the community, then the healthcare system treats you as if you do not exist.
People who are homebound and/or bedridden have extensive and systemic problems with accessing the medical healthcare system, including access to GPs, medical professionals, hospital systems and allied health. If you don’t turn up you are assumed not to need or want the service.
This is not like access to public transport, where we have excellent anti-discrimination laws but the government keeps awarding exceptions the rules.
This is not like access to websites, where there are excellent guidelines about how to be accessible but people just don’t follow them.
This problem is that the entire medical system has been designed and based around physical attendance, and that it treats non-attendance almost exclusively as a problem of patient noncompliance. There are a few small tweaks to make exceptions for people in rural and remote areas, and some even smaller tweaks for people who live in aged care, but in the main if you are homebound/bedridden and you live in the community, then the healthcare system treats you as if you do not exist and should not exist.
In the cases where a homebound/bedridden person is well accommodated, it is not because the healthcare system is working well. It is almost exclusively because someone has gone deliberately out of their way to help, and they will probably not be adequately compensated by Medicare or any other government system for doing so.”
You can download Ricky’s report, entitled “Just Invisible: Medical Access Issues for Homebound/Bedridden People” (or the executive summary, for those unable to read the entire report) from her website:
http://notdoneliving.net/justinvisible/
Why We Keep Telling the Story of ME to the Press
June 6, 2023
No Comments
Our press work continues to drum a strong beat as we tell the story of ME everyday to the media. We will continue to fight for our community’s decades of expertise living with, treating and researching ME to be heard, and integrated into our government’s Long COVID response. We refused to be erased from the
2 thoughts on “Just Invisible: Medical Access Issues for Homebound/Bedridden People”
indeed a critical issue.
anybody with m.e. can become bedridden at any time, [possibly permanently], and some countries [including the us] do not provide or support cooking and cleaning, or medical care, or anything else.
yep. I am denied access to medical care yet am required to show up in person or lose my medications, in home help a few hours a week, my housing, everything.. I was being viewed as exibiting “attention-seeking Behavior”.
I’m checked up on once a month to make sure my non live-in caregiver is vaccuming and cleaning rooms I cannot even use. It’s like I’ve masterminded some deviously evil plan to get help with housework.
Comments are closed.