Tricky Question Here

Hi Friends. I've been around this site for several years now and some of you know that I am the Bariatric Program Coordinator for a large hospital. I read the Q&A every day and try to answer a few questions to sort of pay it forward because I don't know if I would've made it without this site when I was an immediate post op. I have a tricky question and would love to get some honest answers from you guys. Our program is based on criteria set forth by the N.I.H. (National Institutes of Health) and the ASBS (American Society of Bariatric Surgeons). We require quite a bit of pre-operative testing including Patient Seminar, Internal Medicine, Sleep Evaluation, Psychological Evaluation, some patients must have a Cardiac Work up or Pulmonary work up, Support Group attendance, Prep Class Attendance, etc. We require that our patients use the physicians that practice at our facility because, in the event of a complication during surgery, it wouldn't do much good for the patient's physician to be at another hospital or even in another town. We put alot of emphasis on pre-operative wellness and sometimes ask our patients to lose weight or have a few sessions of counseling or wear a CPAP. This is all done because a healthier pre-op patient is more likely to be a healthier post-op patient and less likely to become a statistic. This all makes so much sense to me but it's possibly because I work in the field. We've been accused of sending people for pre-op testing in order to make money for certain docs that we like and we've even been accused of sending people for pre-op testing because we get financial kick backs. None of this is true. We are simply striving to get our patients healthy and give them the best surgical experience possible. O.K......here's the question........Why does this make people so angry? I see posts on here where one patient will tell another patient to get another surgeon if they are having to undergo a full pre-operative workup. I've seen surgeons called jerks, nutritionists called idiots and hospitals called money-grubbers. Where is all this anger coming from? Speaking as a patient I can tell you that I wanted it as fast as I could get it too but I would have appreciated some pre-operative testing. If someone needs brain surgery they're perfectly willing to undergo all sorts of tests prior to surgery. The same is true with cancer, gynecological problems and more. Can someone explain to me why patients feel that requiring pre-operative testing and wellness is a bad thing? I'd really like to understand it. As always, thanks for your unending help and assistance.

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