Why do hospitals run on systems?

Why don't hospitals run on systems, or at least they should run on systems.

I'm having my most recent experience with the hospital.

It's been some time since I've been in the hospital system.

But my father has late-stage dementia, he's in a nursing home.

And two nights ago, He was wandering and had a fall that broke his hip.

So he's now got a broken hip.

got dementia.

And the experience so far has been very good.

Very good.

Very good indeed, in terms of working out, just watching hospital inaction to go through and, and see the initial decision, which was actually a phone call between a friend of mine and myself like, Hey, should we get my dad's hip fix? He's, absolutely 100%.

Obviously, the concern is with dementia, it's like, Hey, are our medical things worth doing.

But He was 100%, we clearly know this has been studied to death, that hip replacements make a difference in pain.

I was like, great, great.

The alternative 10 weeks unbroken here, like the only way you would do that is if somebody has less than 10 weeks to live.

That's not his situation.

And so the decision was made, I called the nursing, they called the ambulance, the ambulance came, they took them to the emergency department, emergency department went through their systems, to get him diagnosed, to work out what they're going to do.

And now he's in the orthopedic ward, awaiting surgery.

And we're still going through more systems, which involves, hey, who's consenting him who's going to say, yes, you can do the surgery, obviously, He cannot consent himself dementia precludes the ability to make a decision about what's in his best interest.

So, my family, we are involved in discussions like it's pretty clear, it's an easy decision that the benefits of this operation clearly outweigh the risks and the suffering, that will happen if we do not do it.

What I wanted to bring to your attention is that well-run hospitals will focus on systems for one particular reason, and that is that the downside consequences of getting things wrong, because of a lack of systems are so severe, that it doesn't take many episodes for people go, Hey, we got to do something.

This was actually documented in a book by a surgeon, He was like, here's the power of checklists.

Checklists are a type of system.

They're like, Hey, before we do the surgery, we're going to check all these things are done, make sure that they're done.

And this prevents stuff-ups like operating on the wrong side.

This prevents people from having lost consent forms, this prevents people who are missing allergies, all of these things that if they happen, they have severe downside consequences.

They may not.

And it may be manageable, but the potential at least exists for bad things.

I've certainly had that to a patient of mine, where they operate on the wrong side of the neck.

And it's like, oh, man, it's, you know, neck surgery is risky, it's got high risks, and then to find out that they did the wrong side is like, how did that happen? How did that happen? And how do we make sure that never happens? Again? You see, this is a question that you should be asking yourself in your business, how do we make it that this never happens again? And the fact is, most businesses struggle because they have no documentation.

And even if they do, they don't use it.

So this means that when that question comes, how do we make sure that this never happens? Again, you're immediately starting from a very difficult place.

And that is you don't know what happened in the first place.

Like how did that get missed in the first place? We don't know.

Why not? Well, it's not documented.

And if it's is documented, we didn't use the documentation, we did something else.

And sure, you can go back and retrospectively work out what got done.

But you're dealing with people, you're dealing with emotional people who perhaps are struggling under the situation, perhaps there's something that's gone wrong quite badly.

It's like, wow, perhaps they don't remember everything that happened.

Compare that to a situation where something bad's happened, but you have documentation and your team uses that documentation.

Now you can go to the documentation and go okay, what went wrong here? Oh, look, we missed this step.

Or we did this incorrectly.

Or this got done this.

This actually got followed, but it leads to the wrong outcome.

Now you have to change the documentation.

And because your team has documentation and your team uses documentation now Now that change is made, it will be propagated ongoing, you will run into a particular problem here, though, and that is that experience, people in your business will likely skip the new documentation, they won't notice that they'll keep going.

Because they are routine eyes, they become habituated to how it was done.

And so one of the interesting things to me about, say SOP software is the ability to force users to review changes and go, Hey, Red Flag, there's a change in this system that you must sign off on, you must do it this way, from now on, this is not the same system that you have been doing.

But rather, this is a new system, this is the real power of SOP software, to stop your experienced people and say, hey, there has been a change here, it's not so much in the documentation, it's not so much and getting them even to use it, although both of those are significant problems.

But once you get to that stage, then you face a third interesting problem, that is your experience, users won't be using the detailed instructions.

And so you must stop them and put up a stop sign and say stop, something changed here, pay attention to this new way of doing it.

Perhaps even you could force them for the next three to five times and say, go through and use it go through and use it not for some that they will choose to do that so that they learn the new way of doing things.

This none this rarely happens.

I was chatting with a software developer, and it's very interesting.

And they said one of the problems is the number of compliance changes that happen so frequently, it's very hard to keep up.

And so what they were subscribed to was a legal service that did all of the European rules.

And they kept up to date.

And then they sent out all of those compliance changes to all of the subscribers.

So one business was doing the work, but it affected everybody.

And He was like this is a clear value proposition because to pay our own lawyers to do that would cost a fortune.

And so then they're non-compliant.

This will become an increasing problem in the future as we head towards more compliance.

We already have truckloads of it, you might say, Well, why are we going to get more compliance? Well, it's because people aren't doing it.

So to have a better way of doing it to have a better sign off hospitals, particularly because of their downside risks of errors of getting sued of death.

All of these problems mean that compliance and checklists and signing off on the correct SOP the correct procedure, that is the latest one, the updated one, the one that is meant to be used not the one from three months ago, not the one from 12 months ago, and certainly not the one that doesn't exist, it is very hard to sign off on a procedure that does not exist.

You can try, but it won't work.

It won't stand up in court, it won't have any value.

So let's review here.

Why this system? Why do hospitals love systems? Why? Because they prevent downside risk? And what are the three things that need to be in place in order to do that, number one, you've got to have documentation.

Number two, your team has to use documentation and number three, they have to use the right documentation.

This is a significant problem.

This is causing you difficulties.

This is causing you lat long hours.

This is causing a lack of profit and general unhappiness that you are cursing Why doesn't your business work as well as it should get these three on point and particularly if you integrate them with the way that you do your work? Imagine your project management integrates with your SOPs.

And now you were talking about a way of doing work that is fast, effective, and compliant.

Need some help with that? Head over to systemio.dev. Thanks so much for tuning in.

I'm going to go see my dad.

Look forward to seeing you tomorrow as we continue this journey into the power of systems to create results.

I'll see you then.