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Here is the perfect story about bad bad bad Germany that may be probably referenced by Russia Today or ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fritzmorgen (if not already).
For those who do not read German or don't like google translate, the story is about a hospital few blocks away from our home. They recently dismissed a head of transplantology unit, who was caught in many violations. The essence of the scandal is that this guy was faking tests results to increase the number of patients who gets liver transplants.
However, I am not planning to steal work from RT and write about how bad German healthcare system is (because, according to our family experience, it isn't). I think the root cause of the problem is not specific for healthcare at all! And it is not greed to blame, I doubt that the doctor was taking bribes from patients. Some of his patients were alcoholics with cirrhosis who did not survive transplantation. I doubt they would pay for it. I think the doctor's motivation was simple, and there was a hint in the Sueddeutschezeitung article I am referring to.
The hospital was lagging behind in number of transplantation surgeries they were performing. I am certain this metric was very important for the management. And every time management invents a simple metric (LOCs written, bugs closed, bugs found, livers transplanted, customer satisfaction scores from surveys, even sales $), this metric is abused by career motivated individuals.
Is there a way to fairly judge employee's perfromance? No! If there was, management job could be automated :) There is always a tradeoff between installing a set of metrics, that will be abused, or using common sense judgement, that is very subjective.
fritzmorgen (if not already).For those who do not read German or don't like google translate, the story is about a hospital few blocks away from our home. They recently dismissed a head of transplantology unit, who was caught in many violations. The essence of the scandal is that this guy was faking tests results to increase the number of patients who gets liver transplants.
However, I am not planning to steal work from RT and write about how bad German healthcare system is (because, according to our family experience, it isn't). I think the root cause of the problem is not specific for healthcare at all! And it is not greed to blame, I doubt that the doctor was taking bribes from patients. Some of his patients were alcoholics with cirrhosis who did not survive transplantation. I doubt they would pay for it. I think the doctor's motivation was simple, and there was a hint in the Sueddeutschezeitung article I am referring to.
The hospital was lagging behind in number of transplantation surgeries they were performing. I am certain this metric was very important for the management. And every time management invents a simple metric (LOCs written, bugs closed, bugs found, livers transplanted, customer satisfaction scores from surveys, even sales $), this metric is abused by career motivated individuals.
Is there a way to fairly judge employee's perfromance? No! If there was, management job could be automated :) There is always a tradeoff between installing a set of metrics, that will be abused, or using common sense judgement, that is very subjective.
