How Is Taylorism Used In Healthcare

Frederick Taylor’s legacy of scientific management incorporates the principles of organized efficiency, improved quality, elimination of waste and decreased financial expenditure. Taylorism inspired the reconfiguration of workflow processes to assimilate control through calculations and measurement. The landscape of health care delivery today reflects these principles. There are multiple examples of how healthcare has introduced standardization to decrease variability in clinical performance and application for reduction of error and preservation of finances. One example is the emphasis on decreased wait times in the Emergency Department (ED) and calculating wait time distribution based on acuity and priority. An article by Stanford, a statistical
healthcare environment are a hindrance to the delivery of quality care because they maintain tight control of clinical workflows and constrain the clinician’s capability to apply knowledge and skills. The Lean and Six Sigma methodologies reflected in the Taylorism model increases efficiency but at what cost? The standardization of care creates a gap between medical quality as defined in clinical guidelines and the practices of care (Zuiderent-Jerak, 2009). Applying standardization methods to maximize efficiency efforts can come at the expense of a genuine and sincere patient-physician interaction. If physicians adopt the theory behind Taylorism they would do just a few jobs repetitively and well but for shorter, limited amounts of time. In healthcare, this is impossible when each patient is individually unique and requires an extensive quality encounter to determine the best course of treatment. Patients do not want to feel as if they are just a number and are on an assembly line. Physicians resent the expectation to see more patients to remain financially competitive and meet metrics and requirements for HMO reimbursement. Providers cannot provide optimal quality care if encounters are rushed and there is the lack of a sincere interaction. Failure to respect every individual’s situation erodes the patient-provider relationship and creates a sense of unease rather than confidence for both the patient and provider. This shifts the cultural perception from caring and serving the best interest of the patient to being victims of following the standardized efficiency checklist and pathway for delivering care. The healthcare industry is a corporation but physicians did not go into practice to become business