You Wreck Me

I jam out on my way to work in the morning. It wakes me up and gets my feet tapping for the day. Today’s jam out song was “You Wreck Me” by Tom Petty. My husband has seen Petty in concert a few times and he tells me about people flying out of their seats and dancing in aisles as soon as they hear the first few chords. I don’t blame them. I have to all but tie my hands to the steering wheel to keep from playing air guitar as I drive.

After I hit rewind and listened to it a few hundred times, I came up with the bright idea that this should be the Obama administrations theme song. I mean, its perfect…the world is saying:

Rescue me should I go down
If I stay too long in trouble town

If the healthcare industry had an address, I think it wouldn’t be too far from trouble town. There is always hope of moving into a better place, but one can’t just decide they don’t like where they are and move on to greener pastures. We must have a clear idea of where we want to be, how much it costs and if it fits the budget, and if we can all live peacefully there. And then there is the sifting through the junk, throwing out the things that are outdated and useless and finally packing up what works and carrying it with you.

I commend the administration’s effort to get moving on health reform. Trisha Torrey wrote a great piece on understanding healthcare reform. Read more about that at http://patients.about.com/od/patientempowermentissues/a/hcreform-hub.htm.

I can picture the President in his “corduroy pants” with the First Lady saying,

Now and again I get the feeling
Well if I don’t win, I’m gonna break even
Rescue me, should I go wrong
If I dig too deep, if I stay too long

I’d like to take this opportunity and thank the President for his effort and motivation. I’m hoping it doesn’t wreck him because it moves us. It moves us all onto our feet and gets our toes tapping and ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

I believe in my work.

Claire

Tunnel Vision

One of my favorite television shows is Sunday Morning on CBS. Yesterday, they did a story about text messaging and related this societal obsession to the Laputians in “Gullivers Travels”, the classic novel by Jonathan Swift. According to Gulliver, the Laputians are

“always in such deep thought that they have to employ special servants to alert them when there is something worth seeing or hearing or when a response is needed”- http://tiny.cc/PoI9s

I thought about my own “deep thoughts” around medication process and realized that I too can get tunnel vision sometimes. There are so many other ways that organizations can address medication safety. Things like driving greater consistency in medication decisions for one.

Aligning the drug formulary and medication policies with industry best practices can standardize products and processes that result in safer, more cost-effective care. Also, you can provide ways for medications to be monitored and managed with greater accuracy.

Most importantly, we can all step out of our heads for a minute and look at the environment around us. The Lean Blog posted some great thoughts around this subject last week http://www.leanblog.org/2009/05/you-learn-lot-just-by-watching-then.html.

Maybe we shouldn’t think too “laputiously” about this – it is after all, simple observations that can bring significant ideas. Hopefully, we all won’t need special servants to remind us to pay attention to our environment. Say, like “Microsoft outlook meeting reminder”.

OOPS!!! Gotta go!

I believe in my work.

Claire