Working in health care you work in a collection of systems. There is service delivery, information collection and dissemination, legal adherence, and even more. The administrators of the the health care system are always looking for efficiencies and ways to improve it so it can do a better job.
While I cannot disagree with the nobleness behind this, they fail to understand the principle of GIGO or Garbage In Garbage Out. GIGO comes from the world of computer programming. There is a recognition in that industry that computers and programs are fundamentally dumb and they will only do what you tell them to do. If the user puts in garbage, then the user will get garbage back. The best programs cannot think for the user, they are simply tools.
This has been lost on administrators and bureaucrats in health care (and likely elsewhere). The greatest system designed will not protect against laziness, incompetence, mistakes, and simple bad luck. This coupled with the gross deficiencies inherent in our socialized health care system, it is little wonder how Garbage In becomes Garbage Out magnified. Good system design has an important role to play, but like any instrument or tool, the user is the determinant of the outcome.
Even the best built guitar cannot play itself and in the hands of an incompetent, will sound terrible.
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