Common Sense And Health Care Costs

This Is A Revelation?

Last night my wife and I were stunned to hear some of the 'news' coming out of the Premiers conference relating to controlling the costs of health care.

The first brilliant idea was for the provinces to pool their resources and take advantage of bulk purchasing of drugs. Of course now they have to decide on which drugs to purchase so who knows how long before they actually start saving any money.

Two other stunners in the same news piece came from a large hospital where it actually made the six o'clock news that some genius had discovered they could save virtually hours by rearranging a storage room so that the most commonly used items were placed closest the door, this saving nurses many steps over the course of a day. Brilliant!

The other jaw dropper was they have discovered that by improving the rotation of their blood supplies they can save over $10 million a year by not having to through out expired blood product.

I repeat, the idea that these management revelations are considered newsworthy makes you wonder just how much waste there really is in the healthcare and other government systems where the fact that efficiency is not required because governments (taxpayers) can always be hit up for more money which is much easier than becoming efficient.

Speaking of efficiencies, now that we have our famous strategic plan in place where is that core services review at city hall??