21. Two general principles for improving any process

Over the last year I have experienced several planned hospital admissions, both for myself and with my mother. I had the opportunity to compare 3 public hospitals and one private hospital. Let’s talk about the actual admission process. In public hospitals, you are first asked to queue in the admission area. It then turns out you’re waiting in the wrong line and have to go to the next one. Then you find out something is wrong with your insurance certificate, so you need to go elsewhere to fix it. You end up running from one room to another, trying to solve the algorithm. In a private hospital, however, you go to reception, and from there you are taken straight to the wards.

It seems to me that fixing this mess is quite easy — all it takes is a new streamlined process. The funny thing is that this mess is actually the result of the process. To fix it, two principles should be followed:

1. The actual executors must be interested in optimizing the process.
2. They must have the authority and resources to transform the process.

Check if these principles work for your team.

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