Re: getting the queues down isn just some basic maths
"With a bit of better resource planning, getting the queues down isn't that hard, its just some basic maths."
The maths is easy, but the numbers that go into the maths are a tad more difficult to come by. It takes 7 to 15 years to train doctors and surgeons. It takes 3 to 10 years to train a nurse. How many hip operations will be needed in ten years' time? How many critical care beds and nurses will be needed ? How many social care beds, etc., etc.? We need those numbers, and all the other ones, together with they way we distribute them around the country, and some definitions for standard work. Then the maths is easy and we can start working today to feed the right number of trainees into Uni and building the hospitals to have the right capacity in the NHS in about 10 years time. As long as the spec. doesn't change.
Sure, you could manage the NHS like a production line or a project and I'm sure that a Friday night pubstorm could come up with the treatment equivalents of MRP, pull, flow, kanbans, buffers, scrums, sprints, EV, etc. (pick your buzz space). Maybe the hospital could hold a stock of healthy grans so that when they haven't got the capacity to treat yours they could just send you home with a healthy gran from the buffer stock :-)
Anyone really interested in this subject should try to get hold of "Transforming Health Care" by Charles Kenney.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
