Is Your Private Room Private?
Is Your Private Room Private?
Know your rights!
While visiting my wife in the Lancaster Rehabilitation Hospital, I experienced a showdown with some of the staff. As it turned out, they were under the impression that it was their hospital and that they could just order loved ones around as they pleased. I had a different understanding. After one too many intrusions into my wife’s room, not to provide medical care, but rather, to enforce the hospital’s mask- wearing requirement, I asked the hall monitor a question. “Are you paying for this room?” She said, “No.” I said, “Well, that’s what I thought. In fact, I checked and our insurance company, Aetna, is paying for a private room for my wife. It was my understanding that a private room is supposed to ensure us some privacy.”
The hall monitor didn’t know what to say so she said she would have me speak with someone else. I spoke with the hospital’s CEO Amy Teal. She said that her hospital had the right to discharge my wife or ban me from the hospital. So, I asked her a question. “If I barged into your private bedroom and ordered you to wear a mask, would you put on a mask or would you just be calling the police?”
I’ve often found that when confronted with a “shoe-on-the-other-foot” example, most business owners have a hard time defending their position. What we need to remember is that authority is to be used sparingly and tactfully — and not abused for the benefit of our ego.
In doing research with several other hospitals including Johns Hopkins, what I discovered is most CEOs are very anxious to solve problems; however, a few allow power to go to their heads. As Lord Acton famously said, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
I wonder what the American Civil Liberties Union would have to say about someone barging into a private bedroom and ordering around the participants. It made me imagine what it would be like if some of these hall monitors were working in a prison which allowed conjugal visits. Would they also be running in the cells demanding that the participants wear masks?
Naturally, in society, we have to make sacrifices for the good of the whole. But it’s important to be aware of who’s deciding what’s good for all of us. As Robin Zander once said, “Surrender, but don’t give yourself away.”
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” – James Madison
(This excerpt is taken from my seminar entitled Survive and Thrive VI: Staying Power.) I encourage you to click here to register for my all new Survive and Thrive VI: Staying Power seminar on Thursday, November 17, 2022 from 8:30 AM to 12 noon Eastern Standard Time at Melhorn Manor in Mount Joy, PA. This event will also be available through live streaming.
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