One Chicago questions of the week: Week of April 9

2) How much money could Chicago Med save if it charged doctors for lost time?

One recurring theme since episode one of Chicago Med has been the seemingly constant lack of supplies and equipment that plagues the emergency department.

We’ve seen patients unable to be treated because the hospital doesn’t have the necessary drugs on hand; doctors having to make decisions about what patient is more deserving of the only pints of a rare blood type they have on hand; and, even doctors fighting over which patient should get the one ventilator they have available. Yes, one ventilator in the entire hospital.

Poor hospital administrator Sharon Goodwin (S. Epatha Merkerson) is forever telling everyone there isn’t enough money.

Meanwhile we’ve also been witness to an ongoing escalation of tensions between the physicians of the emergency department and beyond. Since season one, we’ve watched doctors have professional disagreements over how to best treat a patient. That’s a normal part of any hospital, really any workplace.

But we’ve also watched as the aggression and hostility of the disagreements has escalated. Dr. Natalie Manning (Torrey DeVitto) has gone from fighting the good fight for her patients to having loud, angry arguments in front of patients and their families, even verbally attacking patient families in public areas and having extremely unprofessional arguments with her supervisor/boyfriend-on-a-break Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss) in front of everyone and anyone.

Drs. Connor Rhodes (Colin Donnell) and Ava Bekker (Norma Kuhling) have gone from strong surgical disagreement to outright screaming matches in the hallways. Rhodes has resorted to medical trickery to essentially steal a donor heart from Bekker’s patient and in the most recent episode crossed behind even Dr. Isidore Latham’s (Ato Essandoh) back to get his own way.

This staff does an enormous amount of time-wasting and thus wasting money, money that could be spent buying more supplies and equipment to treat their patients. Quite possibly if they spent less time yelling at each other they’d get sued a little less often and not need the pizza room bribe for the ambulance drivers.