If you bring me your computer and ask me to put in a new DVD burner but somehow I remove your hard drive and leave a screwdriver inside your computer, how would you respond to me asking you to pay for the "service" rendered? Wow! You can stop with the profanity it was only a hypothetical question. Now imagine that You've come to the General Hospital in Ohio to get your right leg amputated and we accidentally remove your left leg, and then had the audacity to bill you for not only the correct amputation but also for the mistaken one! You may be as surprised as me to know that only 23 states have rules against charging a patient for certain mistakes!

As I look at my state of residence there is nothing official to stop them from billing me for a medical error. Instead I am supposed to take comfort in the knowledge that they have adopted guidelines to deal with cases such as these. Unfortunately despite these wonderful guidelines the local hospital has in the recent past billed at least one individual for surgery on both of her knees, after initially operating on the wrong one. If nothing else, I can be assured that my insurance company will fight these charges with the same tenacity they fight legitimate ones. That's kind of comforting. . . not!

Mistakes of this kind are referred to by hospitals as "never events", a slightly ironic term since they seem to be happening rather often nowadays. Maybe we can lobby for better legislation and a name change to classify these occurrences as "never say never events". Before you initial your limb for surgery next time be sure to find out what mistakes, if any your state provides protection from.

The hospital where I gave birth to my two daughters -- one less than six months ago -- is shutting its obstetrics practice, selling two of their main buildings and reducing the number of overall beds in the hospital to just half of the official capacity. This glorious institution is not a post-Katrina victim or anything of the like. It's a major urban hospital: the Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn Heights. And it owes $170 million to creditors.

This being Brooklyn, there are other hospitals in the area -- even within walking distance. But there is something of a Starbucks mentality of real estate here, meaning that you could have a hospital on every corner and you'd find enough sick people for each one. Even Starbucks is keeping most of its New York outposts open during its closing spree of 600 stores.

So why close a hospital? The powers that be at LICH cite malpractice insurance and other costs of delivering babies as the major reason for closing that division. My OB actually left the hospital a few months ago because she didn't like the office staff she had to share, and internal politics made it impossible for her to do anything about it. So maybe there's a little tension behind the scenes that we don't know about.

The ward where I gave birth, and subsequently paid $250 a night for a private room, is headed toward condos, it seems, and nearly 3,000 babies a year will have to be born elsewhere. That is not to mention all the sick people who used to head there for emergency care. The buildings will actually make very nice condos, if they can remove that hospital smell. My labor room had a wonderful view of the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan, and it's really close to transportation.