Once Upon a Time in a Hospital

Last night on NPR’s "All Things Considered," Ted Robbins relayed the puzzling story of a patient at the University Medical Center in Tucson known only as “Adobe.” 

UMC staff members have no idea who the man they call Adobe might actually be; the few belongings that were transported to the hospital with Adobe, among them a photo ID issued in Mexico, turned out not to be his.  The predicament is that Adobe doesn’t know his true identity either, responding to almost any question with the single word “Cindi.”

The list of “facts” that UMC knows would fit in a Petri dish.  Adobe was transported to UMC with a traumatic brain injury at the end of April following what must have been a horrific truck accident; four people died, 18 were injured and shuffled to various Arizona hospitals, and another 20 left the scene (Public service announcement: don’t get into what NPR describes as a “pickup truck” with 41 other people).  All involved in the wreck were believed to have been illegal immigrants*.  Adobe prefers to eat fish and melon.  And for someone who can’t remember his own name, the question of health insurance is pretty much a moot point.  There’s your Petri dish.

Were it not for the fact that the melodramatic aspects of this tale involve a living human being, Adobe’s story would be prime fodder for a cinematic treatment.  An overloaded truck.  “Foreigners.”  A gruesome highway accident.  A massive head injury.  Amnesia.  Caring medical staff.  Ice Cream.  An international quest for answers.

Were it not for the fact that UMC has to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars—at minimum—caring for one patient who will more than likely never be able to reimburse the hospital for his care, it would be easy to forget that Adobe’s story is a worrisome parable for the healthcare industry. 

The NPR report quotes a well-intentioned UMC nurse who remarks, “[Adobe] doesn’t have any family, so we’ve become his family.”  Melodrama 1, Parable 0.  The fact is, Adobe is not a member of that nurse’s family, nor is he the orphaned child of an anthropomorphized UMC.  He’s a man with a serious brain injury who is unlikely to pay his escalating medical bills, whose life was saved by the medical arm of an organization while it’s other arm—the financial one—slits its own throat.

Adobe’s story is a melodrama and a parable.  It’s soon to become a tragedy for one or both parties involved as well.

*It is my opinion that Adobe’s immigration status is immaterial to this story.  Were he an American billionaire, insured to the eyeballs and in the same medical predicament, the financial implications for UMC would remain the same.