[Oops. In case there's an error message with the video, here's the link to it on Hulu.]
A few years back, when I was chairman of the local Surgical Quality Assurance Committee, we got dinged on a visit by JCAHO (the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospital Organizations, pronounced "jaycoe" for reasons unknown.) Our monitoring process was flawed, they told us, because we weren't uncovering unnecessary surgery. When I suggested maybe it was because, in our community, we weren't doing unnecessary operations, the response was "C'mon!!" (Pronounced cuh-maa-hnnn, with the maa scaling downward, and with facial expression to match.)
So I did what any responsible surgeon would do: I sent around a memo (from the fictitious Surgical Utilization Committee, or SUC) to the entire medical staff, detailing the trouble we were in, asking for suggestions how we could increase our amount of unnecessary surgery, and including a few ideas of my own: declaring certain operations always unnecessary, such as left inguinal hernia; designating one surgeon a month to do unnecessary operations; arranging a specific location, such as the newly-opened surgery center as the place to do them.
Sitting in the doctors' lounge as people picked up their staff mail the next morning after I'd gotten there early and deployed the paper, I noticed a certain stratification of responses: internists, seeing the word Surgical, shitcanned the paper without reading it; surgeons read it over and got an excellent laugh out of it; family docs read it with incredulity, saying, "This is terrible! They can't do that!!! They can't DO that!!!"
Anyhow, as I read of the above-Reported typically teabagger response by North Carolina legislators (fresh off marshaling discrimination into their constitution) to worrisome scientific data, I thought of my memo for some reason. Both are incredibly stupid responses; one a seriously deluded and dangerous (if quite emblematic of the current R party) response to an actual problem, and the other a fanciful (let's call it brilliant and hilarious, okay?) response to a non-problem. But in North Carolina, no one's laughing, and, evidently, not enough are saying "They can't do this!!" Revealing much about the teabagger mentality, they actually think they were making a global problem go away, like babies playing peek-a-boo.
Me, I didn't really think I was; but when JCAHO followed up six months later, we passed without having made any changes.
JCAHO, like most Republicans, is easily distracted by random shiny objects. Unfortunately, like many bureaucracies, they continuously invent new distractions in order to justify their continued existence. Quality is a difficult metric, so you measure something else and pretend you're measuring quality.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to start a political party from scratch, I would use fighting the bureaucrats as my organizing principle.
Painless
I LIKE it...
ReplyDeleteSid, you're(see?!:) one of the few Surgeons I'd warn when I let rip one of my Bho-Pal-esque SBDs...
I used to love the little cards they'd hand out for what you were supposed to say if one of the JACKOFF goons asked you something you were supposed to know...
I always fantasized about saying "What is this "Crash Cart" of which you speak?" but somehow I was always scheduled off when JACKOFF showed up, even when I didn't have any vacation days..wierd.
Frank
Why does Romney lie? My theory? Why did Mitt Romney nevertheless tell Missouri voters President Obama “slowed the recovery and harmed our economy?”...." Could it be that if you are raised in a fraudulent religion, even from crackpot religion standards, you are through and through a fraud. If Obama could be influenced by Wright to be an Alinski Socialist by his attendance in Wright's Christian congregration, yet still hold the opposite view because of his Sharia/Muslim dabbling as a young child, then Romney is infected to the core as a fraud. He has no choice but to be a fraud. He is a Mormon!
ReplyDeleteAnd of course his handlers allow him to open his mouth and, well, lie because it works!
I'm curious to see whether an expose of Mormonism will be considered unfair or below the belt when linked to a R campaining for the highest office (I think a D Mormon is anathema) - possibly framed as irrelevant to his political agenda. If the latter becomes the tactic, hopefully an unwitting precedent will be set and all religion/religious affiliations of candidates will become likewise irrelevant in elections. Unfortunately, I know that hypocrisy doesn't work that way. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteDonna