Hospitals: The New American Assembly Line
Over the last 20 years, healthcare in America, especially in tertiary and quaternary care centers, has adopted Lean and Six Sigma assembly line practices to squeeze efficiencies from the healthcare system and their workers. Patients are introduced and one end of the line and emerge intact and improved health, declining or,,,dead. The Lean/Sigma Six models effectively ignore the fact that patients are NOT standardized widgets to be knocked off on an assembly line and nurses are, most definitely, not low skill, interchangeable workers on an assembly line. The drive to squeeze efficiencies from the healthcare system has become ever more acute in the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic. Data shows that, even before the pandemic, hospitals had thin operating models. Add to that the toll taken by COVID 19, as hospitals had to halt profitable elective treatments and procedures, and devote hospital resources to caring for those suffering from COVID 19 and those operating margins took a no...