Ye Gads! Holy S*&%!

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I’m spending more and more time on healthcare issues, as many know. At or near the top of the list is hospital errors. Much of the fix requires driving “garden variety” quality improvement systems through our acute-care hospitals and clinics. One blanches—I did yesterday—to read a news bulletin reporting that there are about 1.5 million miscues per year in the administration of drugs; that’s apparently one per day per patient. Then, if you dare, add in the number attendant to doctors’ office visits. And yet so many players continue to balk at widespread use of tools and techniques that could make a profound difference.

But those statistics didn’t come close to upsetting my applecart as much as the _______ (disgusting? tragic?) picture above. Our HHS secretary tells us that obesity, especially childhood obesity, is a bigger problem than terrorism. What you see above looks pretty much to me like a clogged artery (but what do I know?). Instead, it’s a close-up, taken with my garden-variety Sony, of a tiny section of a KFC photo-poster on the window of a shop near me here in Singapore. What can I say (sorry) other than: Holy shit!

I am, I suppose, not surprised—but I am wholly disgusted.

Tom Peters posted this on August 4, 2006, in Healthcare.
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