I Blame Obamacare
Hospitals are just not producing at the same rate they used to. In particular, they are not producing as many avoidable deaths.
Wide-ranging efforts to make hospital care safer have resulted in an estimated 50,000 fewer patients dying because of avoidable errors in the past three years, according to a new report presented by government and industry officials.
I do think that Obamacare is responsible for a significant part of this change.
I wonder how Fox News will spin this (not really — I am sure the study won’t be mentioned at all).
Nah, the cretins over at NC will cover it.
“50,000 lives saved, but another 100,000 lost due to Obama settling for the ACA”
Electronic health records.
Robert:
One can only imagine how this will be spun.
I would suggest that it has to do with implementing check list developed on best practices, now being used.
I would like to point out that much of the gains made in error reduction comes from the implementation Six Sigma variation reduction tools along with Lean in health care tools. Last thing to remember is that the overall culture of the enterprise will trump lean and six sigma efforts every time. I don’t know if Obama’s health care plans had anything to do with this but in the efforts to reform and make health care more affordable to ALL…I’m sure that the evidence could be corroborated either way to fit your ideology… As a political solution or as a management-scientific Lean enterprise solution.
“Can’t Obama do anything right? Obama death panels a failure!”
People (such as one of my state’s senators, Charles Schumer) have been saying lately that President Obama made a mistake spending so much effort on such a controversial bill as the ACA. How can they not realize that the reason ACA is controversial is because of Republican spin and propaganda, that most of its actual flaws are due to its Republican heritage (pun intended) plus Republican sabotage, and that whatever he spent time on would have been demonized the same way?
@William Ryan, re “Six Sigma”
Please don’t get me started on Six Sigma. Jack “Straight from the Gut” Welch was an early implementer of Six Sigma at GE, so I have my “Green Belt” certificate and and won an award for best quarterly Six Sigma Project Report (or something like that). The main technical effects Six Sigma had on my department (turbine mechanical development) as I saw it was to promulgate the gross oversimplications that every probablity distribution was a normal distribution (including – in the course homework – those with variables which could never be negative such as the MacDonald’s time-study problem), and that every problem could be modeled by a curve-fit to a couple of parameters using at most second-order terms (A, B, A^2, AB, and B^2). Its effect on productivity and problem-solving was negative, as after doing my necessary and useful assignments using the technical skills appropriate to them, I then had to find some way to calculate some statistics (using the normal distribution) which would allow me to submit a Six Sigma report to fulfill the office’s SS quota.
JimV:
Interesting; “The main technical effects Six Sigma had on my department (turbine mechanical development) as I saw it was to promulgate the gross over-simplification that every probability distribution was a normal distribution” and maybe I am misunderstanding your comment? Are you saying they did not identify normal and abnormal distributions and only used normal six sigma techniques? Just curious.
JImV,
Those that can do, do.
Those that can’t do, teach.
Those that can’t teach, consult.
Those that can’t consult, do Six Sigma.
“Can’t Obama do anything right? Obama death panels a failure!” JDM
You mean like trying to correct some of the health insurer’s worst abuse of the insured.
You mean palliative care instead of medical interventions which neither serve the patient or their family.
Dear Run75441, JimV, and EMichael
What is six sigma ? I have never heard the phrase. To me it means six standard deviations and I read “normal” so it sounds to me that it is roughly synonym for ” fuggedaboudit”.
Somehow I don’t think I can make money out of Fuggedaboudit Consulting Inc
Hi Robert:
six sigma or lean six sigma or if you do not wish to go elsewhere: “Six Sigma is a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects (driving toward six standard deviations between the mean and the nearest specification limit) in any process – from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service.”
It is also a fad in industry today and misapplied.