Dr. Jeremy Graham, a Spokane physician, has written a provocative essay comparing the Factory to the modern medical Clinic. As you read it, think about the role you play as patient, family member, care giver.
Dr. Graham writes: "Industrial throughput and productivity are the watchwords of contemporary US healthcare. Striving to deliver care, administrators and doctors advocate “lean management,” “best practices,” efficiency, and production. A spirit averse to waste rides high upon the elimination of “non-value-added” activities. It seems that with sufficient abstraction, medicine is an industry which can learn to be lean, like any other. Factory and farm, hospital and clinic, are ultimately interchangeable." To read more Download The Factory_Graham
Author Bio: Jeremy D Graham MA, DO, FACP writes, "I am a teaching Internist on the faculty of Internal Medicine Residency Spokane with a clinical emphasis on Inpatient wards and hospital medicine. With my background and prior training in cultural anthropology, my academic interests include incorporating the social and material costs of illness as relevant outcome considerations of humane medical care. Email: Jeremy Graham.
