Fix a process and save some lives

摘要

Most of us have spent more time than we want in hospitals and doctors' offices. While there, industrial and systems engineering types usually can spot a plethora of options for process improvement. For example, sometimes it takes days for a hospital to request a patient's medical records from specialty doctors. Perhaps the office setup at your primary care physician blocks the receptionist's views of the waiting room, meaning sick people often sit, forgotten. Knowledge about patients gets dropped during shift changes. And it can seem like the unit doesn't have enough nurses to handle all the people needing their care.