Thursday, May 13, 2004

Highland Consultants Cut Waste and Fat

Cambio did it; they found the fat and waste. They announced their long awaited lay-off list. Cambio’s cut list spared the bloated middle management structure. They concentrated their efforts mostly on laying-off clerks, housekeepers, and patient care providers.

The emergency room will lose all its nursing assistants. I guess we’d rather pay an RN or MD to push a gurney to a broken elevator and wait there to take the patient to their room. It can take up to an hour to get a patient from the emergency department to a room and we’ve just doubled or tripled the salary of the staff that will perform this task. Then I suppose the doctor will come back and clean the equipment for the next patient. But hey, there is an upside with Highland’s highly unreliable elevators it’s probably is safer to have a registered nurse or doctor riding them at all times.


They also hit housekeeping hard-that makes sense, patients often complain that Highland’s just too clean. Maybe it’s that excessive cleanliness that results in so many patients with multi-drug resistant infections. I’m sure the cost of excessive cleaning has driven many businesses into financial ruin. Isn’t that what happened with Enron?

Medical clerks, there’s another huge waste. Why do you need someone on a nursing floor who can decipher physician’s orders or coordinate admissions and discharges. It just takes all the fun out of medicine. Nurses should just guess what the doctor wrote, and since they can’t read the signatures either, just guess who wrote it. As for discharges, well if they go slow enough patients will learn to get themselves home. Admissions, well that should be less of a problem because now that doctors will be doing transport and equipment cleaning we’ll be expecting far fewer admissions.

You just have to give it to those consultants and many of the staff would like to, but you just can’t find them. One was spotted last week scurrying up the backstairs.

4 comments:

Mitsu Fisher said...

Are these consultants worth all that money?

Anonymous said...

Hey, who says Cambio doesn't have a conscience? They just keep it in the closet behind their sheets. YEE-HA!
Also, some say I may be a coward for not signing my name. But with today's technology maybe they can spend
some of that money they stole from the community and track me down. In closing, some may say I'm a coward
for not signing my name, but in the words of Bob Marley, "He who lives and runs away, lives to fight another day". While running, be mindful of people who's most significant accomplishment is mastering the art of walking upright. Just ask the staff member they backed over. Hey Cambio,my love to Cletis and Bubba! Bring me a squirrel sammich next time y'all are
in town. Peace!

Anonymous said...

Here! Here! Perhaps in the finite wisdom of the current consulting menace, there might be a page in the playbook for oh, I don't know, MARKETING this institution to private insurance companies. AND maybe learning how to actually bill in a 7 day or less turn around time to insure payment of at least a portion of our costs. AND maybe keeping caregivers on staff to actually fulfill the demands of the patients who come here. Oh yeah, perhaps actually looking for qualified executive staff that have real hospital-based management and administrative experience and saavy to lead us beyond the 70's decade.

Anonymous said...

Calling all MEDIA...We MUST get public attention to the REAl problems that have caused Highland hospital to fail. The minute anyone gets close to the truth, another "interm CEO" gets hired and the prior one gets his "hush money" to go away quietly. Is anyone able to look any deeeper than laying off staff as a viable means to keep the hospital afloat? ....more on this later...shhhhhhhhhhh