We go back to infrastructure for a break from health care (although the two are intimately related in many ways.) Some of you will remember my story about the use of cowbells to forestall too-low trucks from hitting underpasses along the Boston river roads. Now comes this story from Australia, where waterfalls do the trick!
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Your cowbells remind me of an idea I keep coming back to- that commonsense solutions CAN be applied to healthcare. I sometimes feel that it is so complicated that it is incomparable to other industries- but it doesn't have to be. Yes there are an insane amount of regulations- some of them necessary, others not- but we who complain about these regs are the ones who put them there, whether we admit it or not. Some of us as patients, some as physicians, some as administrators; always part of a group, but its nover 'our' fault. Healthcare is now considered a necessity, but so is food and water, and they are not as complex as industries. Yes, healthcare is expensive and unpredictable, but so is energy, yet that is a less domestically controlled but a more productive and calculable market. Don't we have a problem of treating healthcare so differently that it takes a life of its own, to the detriment of patients?
Yes! Can bureaucrats get out of the box like this? It's surely less expensive, and more effective than the traditional, and overlooked signage, blinking lights, etc. Maybe we can merge artists with engineers to address the problems creatively.....Thank you for sharing...
Would that a commonsense solution like a cowbell might be applied to the complicated situations which surround healthcare. I am reminded by a recent post on social media referring to a Washington Post article of Feb 17, 2012 as well as a book I read recently----"Overdiagnosed." both point to the enormous sums of money expended for difficult to measure or value outcomes. Having become big business, healthcare has a whole new language and face. I am afraid little of it has to do with prolonging or improving life much. Words like "value" have lost their meaning----value to whom? Since an understanding of the importance of antiseptic technique, of keeping water supplies and sewage separate, because of the discovery of immunization and antibiotics and a few other medications; maternal and early childhood deaths have declined and communicable diseases somewhat tamed. The real effect on longevity seems confined to these rather than the glamor of robotic surgeries and transplantation. Healthcare will always have a strong emotional component, but we seem to have strayed far afield from sensible goals. Who are we, what can we do about a healthcare issue and should we do it are the real questions. I went into healthcare to relieve suffering, not prolong or complicate it---big business has made the distance between caregivers and their patients a barely navigable sea of static. The war over who has ascendancy in the Boston health care environment has become more important than the tremendous waste occurring waiting for the bottom performers to finally limp away. How many immunizations might have been given in place of the high priced adverts which choke television today.
"oh look! they put a free truck wash right here in the tunnel!"
pretty cool use of the technology, thanks for this entertaining follow-up to the cowbell saga.
it's not just a problem with truckers either. where i live, we not only have some (old) low railroad trestles, but our bridges (over water) take a beating too; one of the latest in a long line: http://www.thedestinlog.com/news/gridlock-destin-traffic-snarled-after-barge-crashes-into-brooks-bridge-1.114512
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