The Benefits and Risks of Treating Celebrity Patients

In a recent post, the healthcare blogger of the Wall Street Journal , Jacob Goldstein, asked  why Senator Ted Kennedy went to Duke for his brain surgery rather than to Mass General which is in his own back yard (see: Why Did Sen. Kennedy Get Treated at Duke?). Below is an excerpt from the note with boldface emphasis mine:

When the world learned Ted Kennedy had brain cancer, he was being treated at Boston’s Massachusetts General, a world-renowned hospital in one of the richest lodes of medical expertise anywhere in the world. So why did the senator travel all the way to Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina for surgery today?  Certainly Allan Friedman, the neurosurgeon who performed the operation has a sterling reputation for operating on brain tumors....In particular, Friedman has a reputation for operating aggressively on hard-to-reach tumors that may be difficult to remove without damaging healthy brain tissue....And sometimes, patients will travel if they’re interested in participating in a clinical trial offered by a particular institution....But there’s no evidence that Kennedy, who will return to Mass. General for chemotherapy and radiation, is participating in that trial.

There are risks associated with treating a celebrity patient, both for the patient himself and also for the hospital and physicians treating the patient. Celebrities often have the option, as in the case of Kennedy(s), of picking the best surgeon and hospital in the world for treatment. This obviously tends to work toward their advantage. The risk incurred by a celebrity status, however, is that hospital personnel and physicians are forced out of their normal routines by the ballyhoo surrounding the admission and treatment of the patient. Everyone in healthcare knows that mistakes tend to be more frequent when hospital personnel are forced out of their normal routines. These problems are exacerbated if a "John Doe" medical record is generated for the celebrity to avoid prying eyes without links to previous electronic records. To create such links negates the value of creating the anonymous record in the first place.

What are the risks to the hospital and treating physicians of a celebrity admission? A bad result, obviously, can harm the reputation of the hospital, particularly when malpractice is uncovered (see: Dennis Quaid Twins Hospitalized). There is no question in my mind that Dr. Allan Friedman (no relation) is one of the leading neurosurgeons in the country. I am also equally confident that the neurosurgical procedure could have been performed equally well on Kennedy at Mass General. However, I suspect that there were some sighs of relief at the Boston hospital when Senator Kennedy headed south for his tricky brain tumor resection but decided to return to Boston for his chemotherapy and radiation treatments (see: Next up for Kennedy: Chemo, radiation).