If Hospitals ran like Restaurants

Oct 8, 2014

Yesterday, I gave a lecture about Healthcare Interoperability - and the lessons learned from FHIR - to a group of master’s students at Melbourne University HaBIC. In passing, I mentioned the danger of using bad metaphors to describe healthcare interoperability, and compared this to the danger of the whole “healthcare should be like the airlines”… and then today, I saw this (h/t HISTalk)

These things are basically pretty stupid - one day, I really want to see someone do this backwards, and do “what if a hospital worked like a restaurant?” - limited menus, shallow service, variable quality… healthcare is not like a restaurant.

On the other hand, the way the financials work in the USA.. that is pretty stupid; they sure have a point about that.

p.s, for a much more serious comparison, see Atul Guwunde’s Big Med