The reward is really in the JOURNEY to perfection. @parthaskar @SamanthaJNHS @stuartpoynor @DrUmeshPrabhu Agree? #NHS #HITsm
— Rasu Shrestha MD MBA (@RasuShrestha) December 28, 2014
One of the reoccurring learnings I’ve had this year revolves around judging something new against perfection as opposed to comparing something new against the status quo. I see this over and over in the EHR and Healthcare IT world.
Pairing this idea with the idea in the tweet, I wonder if too often we’re found trying to achieve perfection in healthcare that we are afraid to take the journey to perfection.
I’m chewing on this idea this weekend. What are you thinking about this weekend?
I will continue to push buttons to get people to realize that they get better outcomes with in-line “best practices” (map out processes, improve them, test them, roll them out so as to facilitate/encourage consistent use, monitor the processes, carry out data analytics to disoover ways and means of updating these processes).
“Perfection” is not one of Russel Ackoff’s listed planning methodologies (optimizing, adaptivizing, satisficing).
We can optimize processes that have a high component of automation. We can accommodate adaptivizing (i.e. best practices with an override of ad hoc interventions) but in a world of high costs and scarce resources, it seems to me that “satisficing” continues to be all we can afford to do in healthcare.
At the time Dr Ackoff wrote his books, he figured we did not have the wherewithal for “adaptivizing” – i.e. we did not at that time have ACM/BPM.
The recent case of a mother from Canada who had medical problems while on vacation in Hawaii and ended up with a $1,000,000 bill for healthcare services that Insurance would not cover, is a good illustration of the ridiculous state of healthcare services delivery.