Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reporter Sherry Slater appears to have started a bit of a national conversation with her profile of a local hospital which allows patients a glass or two of wine with meals, as long as their physician approves.
It’s part of the Indiana hospital’s efforts to improve patient experience, something its leaders believe has given it a competitive advantage in the area. A hospital administrator said that it was a matter of hospital policy, not state or local regulation, and that other hospitals were taking similar action.
It wasn’t easy for Slater to find evidence of that.
Elizabeth Lietz, spokeswoman for the American Hospital Association, said the Washington-based industry group doesn’t track members’ patient alcohol policies. But in her five years as an association spokeswoman, Lietz had never fielded another question about patients being allowed to drink alcohol in hospitals.
In a follow-up story on NPR’s health blog (which is where we heard about the Fort Wayne story), Eliza Barclay found out from a health care food service company that “many” hospitals stock alcoholic beverages, but she also found a group that thought the practice wasn’t such a wise idea.
Susan Levin is the director of nutrition education at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group that has studied hospital food and recommended ways to promote health through hospital food service. She calls hospitals’ booze-friendly policies “mind-boggling.”
“The hospital just isn’t the right environment for a crutch put you at ease,” says Levin. “Of all the places, hospitals should be educating patients about healthy dietary habits.”
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“When you consider amount of medications people are on in hospitals — it’s a dangerous system to begin with before you even start mixing alcohol into the cocktail,” Levis notes.
