In my latest blog I expressed my frustration and bewilderment in regards to the lack of efficiency in the health care industry. I alluded to my dismay as to the fact that as a whole, the health care industry is decades behind other industries in the use of process improvement philosophies and machine automation in the workplace.
About a week ago after drinking my morning coffee, I assumed my customary position in my reading laboratory as one may call it and came upon an encouraging article in the September issue of IT Solutions. The article was titled "Automation appreciation" and summarized the implementation of an entirely automated medication delivery system at a hospital somewhere in Ohio. The article inspired me to recall experiences I had in working to automate inspections of automotive and airline parts in the early 90’s at various plants in the US. It gave me hope that health care is awakening from its paper dependent existence and that opportunity to participate in this enlightenment may just be around the corner. The article provided examples of where improvements were made and not. It summarized the discovery and implementation process the facility experienced and shared some insight as to what more could be accomplished. It even went so far as to provide recommendations in a "lessons learned" section for others whom are considering such rollouts to learn from. Wow, I gasped, my first engineering project manager used to have a "lessons learned" meeting every Friday prior to taking the team to the watering hole for some end of week relief. Now I am reading about "lessons learned" in a healthcare magazine and I wonder why it took so long.
Since that day I have made a point to spend 30 minutes every morning "Googling" for more cases of the use of both workflow improvement techniques and machine automation in health care settings. I have been encouraged that there is hope for the healthcare system just like back in the late 1980’s when the big three auto-makers were being clobbered by the lean and mean Japanese empire. These three companies became sluggish and fat in waste from years of easy profits. However, they rose to the challenge and by the late 90’s were competing once again with the best. I see similarities in the potential savings in the current health care system to the aging auto industry. The US healthcare industry needs to be pressed into finding these improvements in order to not only save our US citizens money but to also provide for a better product.
It occurs to me that what the US healthcare system really needs is some good old fashion global competition to make it sharpen its iron and trim its fat. So, I now wonder when will the US healthcare industry be exposed to the "global market" like the rest of us. Is this just around the corner? Why has this industry been allowed to practice isolationism? When no others have. Later.
