NHS Waiting Times
There was a report yesterday that said that some NHS Trusts are imposing a minimum and maximum waiting time for some operations and treatment to save money.
If they are they, they are breaking the First Law of Scheduling, which is you maximise your efficiency by agreeing dates between both parties as soon as you can.
I first came across this, when I worked in the Research Department of ICI at Runcorn. We had a small workshop that would make equipment you needed. Everybody used to put a delivery date of ASAP on everything, even if they didn’t want it for a month or so. The outcome was that nothing got delivered in a reasonable time.
The situation couldn’t go on and the manager of the workshop decided that no work would be accepted without an agreed delivery date.
The outcome was harmony and everybody was happy. One interesting side effect of this method, was that when the workshop could see a high peak of future work, they would sub-contract some jobs to an external firm.
I must admit that I stole this technique when I wrote the task scheduler for Artemis, but of course this was a legitimate steal and it made the task scheduler very good.
Some NHS Trusts do use this agreeing of appointments method. Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge do and I’ve negotiated a suitable date and time on the phone several times.
I know too of a farmer, who needed a hip replacement and got the operation done at one of the quietest times in the farming year and a slack time for Ipswich Hospital.
Now most of us have e-mail or can use SMS, surely this negotiation can be an almost painless and automatic process.
It oviously won’t work for emergencies, but say you need something like a hip replacement, a mutually convenient date is best for all parties and in my view will probably add a few percentage points to hospital capacity.
How many NHS Trusts still manage appointments and waiting lists on a non-scientific basis.
Industrial Swearing
With all this talk about swearing, brought out by Wayne Rooney, I must repeat this story, which I heard when I worked at ICI in the early 1970s.
ICI had employed their first female instrument engineer. She didn’t suffer any sexism, but she did feel that when she was working with an electrician or fitter on a chemical plant, there was a certain coolness between them.
One day, whilst she was working with an electrician installing an instrument, she dropped something heavy on her foot and did what most of us would do. She swore loudly and very industrially.
The electrician then put his arm round her and said, “Does that mean we can all swear now, madam?”
Health and Safety
Health and Safety is in the news today, with the government announcing a review by Lord Young.
Strangely, all the Health and Safety training that I got at ICI in Runcorn in the late 1960s, is kicking in to help me protect myself from my weak left side. You have to assess threats in just the way you walked around chemical plants with noxious substances like HF dust all over the place. I still remember the charming and sensible Charlie Akers, who showed me over the BCF plant at Rocksavage Works and still follow his rules on climbing ladders and metal stairs. But Rocksavage in those far-off days had an impeccable safety record and it was all down to everybody working to a sensible philosophy not hard and fast silly rules dreamed up by bureaucrats.
Thank you, Charlie!
Lord Young’s investigation needs to have input from people like you, who are at the sharp end and get hurt when accidents happen.
What Happened to Men’s Nylon Shirts?
Do you remember those awful drip-dry nylon shirts of the ninteen-sixties?
They were awful and I don’t think they did anything for attracting the opposite sex. Especially as they used to shine in the lights on the dance floor.
But why did they disappear?
It was all to do with mini-skirts.
Before women raised their hemlines and men’s heart rate, they used to wear stockings. But as skirts got shorter, you weren’t decent in stockings, so there was a swift move to tights. Look at the average pair of tights and they use perhaps more than twice as much nylon than the stockings they replace. And to make matters worse, you can’t use two odd ones to make a pair.
So the result was that the demand for nylon rocketed.
As you can’t build a new plant overnight, ICI and the other manufacturers had to get the nylon from somewhere.
So they diverted it from men’s shirts to ladies’ hosiery and killed one of the most abominable articles of men’s clothing.
The Anonymous Widower 