ABSTRACT
The connections between rescue and industry are mystified in the hospital through technology and opaque approaches to valuation, as we saw in the previous chapter. Using a ritual of intensification to deliver on a promise of universal rescue keeps heroism, altruism, and the appearance of equity in the foreground, but it is an expensive endeavor indeed. Making the true monetary costs of this endeavor appear as an ancillary concern for hospitals, that is to say, hidden from view, is aided by the very elaboration and diffusion of those costs through the U.S. economy. At the same time, the dying patient has no vocabulary in the languages used and understood by acute-care reimbursement mechanisms. How do these conditions manifest themselves in the fieldwork sites and how do they influence clinician behavior to minimize the exposure to dying? Standards of care commonplace elsewhere in the hospital are not relevant as a mechanism for evaluating dying situations, as discussed in Chapter 1. The answer can be found by considering the phenomenon of time.
