Why do we spend so much time and effort on improving quality, patient safety and working to lower costs when we do not have much to show for our efforts?
Because education—medical schools and graduate management education—is not keeping up. Medical schools, in particular, perpetuate the problems because they fail to acknowledge that what they are doing may be comfortable for those who control the curriculum, but are simply perpetuating bad practices and values.
In healthcare management, while there is not the same direct connection between flawed training and poor quality of care and patient satisfaction, the education industrial complex has something in common with medical schools—a blind eye to the fact that we need to make radical changes and that when we do finally to get around to change, we are usually five or six years behind.
In this new era of healthcare management that will be dominated by structural reform and major reductions in spending from deficit reduction, this is a serious problem worthy of discussion.
The future over the next three to eight years will be extremely challenging. We cannot afford to be running on less than all cylinders.
© 2012 John Gregory Self