That's our quote for the day. That pretty much states in a nutshell what I want to discuss today. In fact, I love that quote so much I might add it to my quote section in the upper right section of this blog.
You can apply this quote to so many things. You an apply it to politics. You can apply it to global warming. And you can apply it to healthcare. I don't want to delve into politics here. Although it would be so easy to do. So, I will just stick with healthcare. And this also applies to any business.
You have finance people. And you have safety people. To me, I'm on the side of the safety people. You want staff to be safe. You want patients to be safe. And you want to keep your job. So, hospitals are known to increase staffing so a healthy number of people are working. This is nice for patients in that they get better care. It's good for staff as they aren't overworked.
But then the finance guy steps in. And he says, "Um, yeah, we are losing money. So, we need to cut staff." This comes down to the bottom line of any business: "Profits and money.
Sure, we are in this business to save lives. But, we are a business. And all businesses need to make money to stay in business. So, this is what the finance guy is interested in.
The safety guy says, "Um, but, if you do that, we will be compromising safety."
And who do you think is gonna win this argument?
That's right: The finance guy.
But, despite what I just said, the finance guy doesn't always win. Sometimes it looks that way. But, I have worked in healthcare a long time now. I've done this long enough to have seen lots of things. And one thing I've seen is that this battle is ongoing. It never ends. There will be a two year period where the finance guy wins out. Then there will be a two year period where the safety guy wins out. And so on and so forth. It's an ongoing battle.
And they both have legitimate arguments. And the reason they keep going back and forth is that they both want to keep their jobs. So, they continue to find ways to justify their existence. And so sometimes they lie. Hence the quote above.
Why would they lie?
Well, as noted: to justify their existence. They lie. The finance guy might finagle the numbers this way or that way to make it look like this department isn't making any money. So, he takes the fake data to the guys in charge. And he convinces him that staff needs to be cut. So, staff is cut. And he wins.
Of course, this goes on another two years until the safety guy finagles his statistics. He goes to the man in charge. Convinces him that safety is being compromised here and here. And the guy in charge goes on a hiring binge. And so for a few years anyway there's more than enough staff.
This goes back and forth. Sometimes it's an honest back and forth. Sometimes it's based on a lie or a tweak of statistics. But, it's how it goes in just about any business. It's like a pink pong ball bouncing back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
It's an interesting concept, anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment