Hospitals are such weird places. It’s like, they’re ostensibly about health and healthcare, and yet they’re deeply permeated with illness and injury. As soon as you set foot in one, you immediately feel your health points drop – unless, of course, you’re urgently in need of medical treatment that you can receive only in a hospital. It all makes sense; just a weird sort of observation. Arguably, hospitals are not healthy places.
It’s easy for me to see it this way, of course, not having had to rely on high-tech medicine to restore me from a dire situation. If I’d had that experience, perhaps I’d see hospitals in a less dim light. As it stands, I’ve only been to these places to visit loved ones while they look and feel their absolute worst, and felt my vitality drop accordingly.
Point is, imagine being someone who regularly needs to attend hospitals for some kind of specialised, ongoing treatment, but isn’t in a terrible state when they do. Would the effectiveness of the treatment be enhanced by having it administered somewhere other than a hospital? Probably, but I guess that’s not always possible, especially where cumbersome and expensive medical equipment is concerned.
There must be some cases, though, where people go out of their way to develop versions of medical devices specifically for home use. For example, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of a guy developing portable hyperbaric chambers. Melbourne medics, are you familiar with these? Apparently, receiving hyperbaric oxygen therapy in hospitals can be a very expensive exercise over time, so people that need it regularly might get a better deal out of buying one of these portable versions. I’m not sure how portable they actually are, but you can set them up in a house.
The positive effects would have to be enhanced, at least in some cases, by virtue of patients being able to be in their own environment. This is just a casual observers’ ponderings, mind you.