Level Loaded Heart Attacks?

Doctor's Advice: Have Your Heart Attack During Normal Business Hours

Now this is sad, maybe it's not surprising. A study has shown that a heart attack patient will get worse care outside of normal “business hours”. Any hospital that is the least bit customer focused would hopefully realize that people aren't going to have heart attacks on a convenient schedule (although people do have more heart attacks on Mondays, the stress of starting the work week).

In any process, you have to look at your demand patterns and plan your capacity according, doctors and support processes both. Since the healthcare world is starting to adopt lean practices, I'd hope they start looking at providing consistent service at all times, it's only fair and humane.

Is this the medical equivalent to the old joke about not buying a car that's built in the first week of hunting season? Cars should be the same quality regardless of when you buy them, right? Wow, I'd hope we could get the same medical care regardless of when we have a heart attack.

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Mark Graban
Mark Graban

Mark Graban helps leaders build workplaces where people speak up and improvement sticks, through Lean management, psychological safety, and better use of metrics. He is a keynote speaker, advisor, and host of the Lean Blog Interviews and My Favorite Mistake podcasts.

He is the author of The Mistakes That Make Us, Measures of Success, Lean Hospitals, and Healthcare Kaizen, and a three-time recipient of the Shingo Publication Award. His next book is The Silence Tax.

Mark is also a Senior Advisor to KaiNexus. Get his free ebooks.

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One comment

  1. I lost both my parents because of heart attack in non business hours and I know the pain of that.

    My mother got an attack in the mid-night and my father during Sunday.

    Hope doctors and hospitals understand our pain and will take appropriate measure to solve this problem.

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