The video below illustrates the fundamental issue at the heart of this entire dispute: Hospitals are (1) Applying business/profit models like Toyota’s “Lean Production” to the “business” of caring for critically ill human beings and (2) Trying to keep up with one another in a medical arms race to create the fanciest, day-spa type facilities to attract patients. So, why, when caring for patients is at the heart of their nonprofit mission, do hospitals respond to the economic recession by cutting the staff caring for those patients while continuing to build outdoor boardwalks and put flat screen TVs everywhere?
And speaking of the recession, Twin Cities hospitals STILL made nearly $700 million in profits during 2009. Yet their public message is, “We’re broke, we’re suffering financially.” It’s just not true.
Case in point. The system in the video below – Park Nicollet – spent $1.5 million on a new outdoor boardwalk during the 2008-09 recession. Meantime the hospital laid off 8.5 percent of its workforce while making $78 million in profits. Is that a good practice of fiscal responsibility and stewardship during the greatest economic recession since 1929? Is that really putting patient care and patient safety first?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbPOO1hNX10]