A busy day

April 27th

How much can you do in one day? You can do a lot.

Today we visited Hoag hospital, the Tiger Woods learning center, a factory building special machines for companies like Abbott and we went to a project foccussing on abused children....

Hoag hospital is a very nice hospital, mostly (again) financed by private money. Rooms are large and have integrated computers for the medical staff. They said that the average occupancy of the rooms is 80%, comparable to the Netherlands. However, for a comparable number of deliveries, they have almost 1.5 times the capacity of beds (and personnel). Ay ll children are checked by a pediatrician and the average length of stay is 24-48 hours when it was an uncomplicated delivery....The number of Caesarian sections is incredibly high: 25-40%!

After Hoag we visited the Tiger Woods learning center. This center, again financed with private money, focusses on 5th grade students, and especially those with a B or C level. By means of experiments and interactive lessons, they try to interest this students in sciences like chemistry and physics. Unfortunately, again this is a project without outcome measurement.

The last few days I have seen that charity plays an important role in everyday life. Without donations, hospitals and educational facilities will go broke....The generous donors, however, most times expect something in return: when they are ill, they want to be treated like a priority patient. They don't have wait in the ER.....

The last event of the day was a visit to Olive Crest. Olive Crest is an organisation comparable with for example Elker in the Netherlands. When for example social securities needs a place for an abused child, who cannot stay at home, Olive Crest is visited. They had recently opened a beautiful facility for children who could no longer stay at home. When an abused child is treated at the ER, and needs no further medical care, then he is immediately transferred to one of the houses of Olive Crest. Here he can stay 90 days. In the meanwhile, social securities looks for a more definite solution. I wish we had such a facility in the Netherlands!