Contributing Factors
There are multiple factors that are contributing to the orphan patient problem in North America. Some of them include:
- problems maintaining a supply of qualified health practitioners
- providing access to them where and when they are needed most
- a growing population of patients
- an aging population of patients
- a sicker population of patients (particularly with diabetes and obesity being rampant in North America)
- a more "medicalized" population of patients (expectations for medical care are higher than ever, and we have more defined diseases to treat)
- increasing complexity of treatments for the diseases we have always known about (standard-of-care treatment for heart attack is much more labour-intensive now than it was even a decade ago)
The orphan patient problem has only been recognized in the media recently.
Older medical references mention the term 'orphan patient' using a different definition, specifically patients with an orphan disease. For example, New England Journal of Medicine mentioned patients with orphan diseases as orphan patients in 1988:
N Engl J Med. 1988 Mar 10;318(10):646. The orphan patient. Shelley WB, Shelley ED. Publication Types: Letter PMID 3344016
Read more about this topic: Orphan Patient
Famous quotes containing the words contributing and/or factors:
“[Girls] study under the paralyzing idea that their acquirements cannot be brought into practical use. They may subserve the purposes of promoting individual domestic pleasure and social enjoyment in conversation, but what are they in comparison with the grand stimulation of independence and self- reliance, of the capability of contributing to the comfort and happiness of those whom they love as their own souls?”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence,—luxury, scepticism, weariness and superstition,—are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)