Tolerate uncertainty: the pending revolution

Arabella Simpkin (Harvard Medical School) and Richard Schwartzstein (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) have published "Tolerating Uncertainty - The Next Medical Revolution?", An article that inspired me to continue with the speech I began in "Against the medicine of manual ", following the reading of “When doctors don’t listen” by Leana Wen and Joshua Kosowsky.

"Although physicians," the authors say, "know that the uncertainty lies in clinical work, the current culture of medicine pushes them to give unequivocal answers, often impossible or even implausible yes/no answers, essential for labelling codes, which pretend, clumsily, to pick up narratives full of nuances, coming from people full of doubts or even forgetful. "

Saving Plans: 5 Errors and 5 Proposals

Remember the games of the analogue times, precisely the moment when the player put the piece in the wrong place and there came a warning sound and the red light lit up the nose? Now it looks like a naff old thing, but I liked that Robert Kaplan and Derek Haas have chosen the image of one of these games, precisely one that is for operating a patient and that they have chosen it to illustrate their article published in the Harvard Business Review blog, "How not to cut health care costs".

When faced with budget cuts, they say, health managers around the world apply the same recipe: reducing staff costs (both in numbers and in wages), optimize the use of space to save general services, stop investments and rationalize spending. The authors do not maintain that this package of measures is poorly done, but they question whether behind these policies there isn’t a strategic way of thinking that combines resources to achieve the best results in the most efficient manner possible and the efforts of the basic savings pack can become counterproductive for the health of people and also for the economy of organizations.

Therefore, we should appreciate that the article analyzes five errors of the basic savings pack, while proposing five alternatives focused on efficiency and effectiveness.