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The hospital's velvet rope

The Dallas Morning News reports today that the UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas keeps an extensive list of influential people who are supposed to get a little extra attention when they come to the hospital for treatment. The perks reportedly include preferential allotment of appointments, free parking and personal escorts through the medical center. Here's how one of the hospital's executive vice presidents defended the program:

"There are patients who are friends of the university, including major donors. Like every other hospital, we have an ability to make sure they don't have any service letdowns. We are not ashamed of having this program. If you have people who are important to your business, you're going to treat them well when they walk through the door."

In other words, it's just good business, a way to keep donors donating. But does that make it right? If a hospital has the "ability to make sure" there aren't "any service letdowns," is that something everyone walking (or being carried) into the hospital deserves? Does it matter that this is a public institution?

Apparently this issue will be a big part of a whistle-blower lawsuit against the hospital filed by a doctor on the center's faculty. Said the doctor's attorney to the Dallas Morning News in the same article, "I hate it that rich people are treated differently than poor people. It's wrong. It's just flat wrong."

Of course, things can look a little different on the other side of the velvet rope. Here's how former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk responded when the Morning News told him he was on the Very Important Patient list: "I wish somebody had told me. I haven't been over there. Sounds cool."

-Greg Dahlmann