Employee Assistance Programs

Family Medical Leave Act

Social Security Disability Insurance

Human Resources

Unions/Associations

Other Resources for Patients

Prepared Patient 411

Rick Daniel, 49, is an application engineer with Rohde & Schwarz, Inc., which develops and manufactures electronic instrumentation.  In December 2005, he was working at the company’s Dallas branch office.  He was at home on the weekend when an aneurysm —hidden in his brain — ruptured.

Daniel was airlifted to Baylor Medical Center and spent two weeks in the ICU after the massive hemorrhage. 

Meanwhile, his workplace was responding.

“My company allows people to donate vacation time,” he says.  “It was great for my family; my wife didn’t have to worry about paychecks.”  He and his family received “a lot of concern, nothing but support,” from the proactive human resources director, who solicited leave donations from his willing coworkers.

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Trust: The First Casualty of Transparency

Political and economic trends are sabotaging our trust in important institutions.

Trust has always been central to health care.  We must trust doctors and hospitals if we are to benefit from the care they offer.   Without trust, who would allow a surgeon to cut open their chest and fiddle with their heart?  Without trust, who would take noxious medicines or suffer radiation burns for a disease whose symptoms they cannot detect?  We patients don't know how these things work, but we are willing to place our lives in the hands of those who say they do and have licenses affirming it.

But public trust in medicine is eroding.

Why?  After all, most of us are mostly insured and mostly healthy. So most of us are strangers to the perils likely to undermine the faith of frequent users of care: medical errors, hospital-acquired infections and eccentric health plan limitations.

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