The healthcare industry is an inventor’s dream come true because it is rich with obsolete ideas…(now with crowdsourced updates)

1. Fax

2. “Patients don’t need or want on-line healthcare”

3. There is no conflict in professional organizations deciding what is best for patients because no one knows patients needs better than doctors and nurses

4. Dealing with diseases that take decades to develop only once they have manifested

5. 5 days a week service.

6. Visit based management of chronic conditions when remote monitoring is equally good or superior

7. It is OK to not share all health data with patients (treating the patient like a ‘non-participant’ in their own health management)

8. Leaflets

9. Lets treat cancer patients with the same drug as last time. If the tumour has developed resistance then we will find out in a few weeks/months.

10. Let’s charge patients money to access healthcare. That will take care of those ‘misusing’ the service. It works for plumbers.

11. Healthcare professionals time is always worth more than patient’s time.

12. Accepting all patients in primary care / A&E / ER with zero prior knowledge i.e. not planning for demand wherever possible

13. What could go wrong if we paid more to fix things than what we pay for making them not happen (“amputation hazard”)

14. We should train people for decades to do only one specialized task and then pay them loads of money to compensate for the length of training. (We teach cataract surgeons ObsGyn, just in case…)

15. Pieces of paper e.g. prescriptions

16. Letting your payer/provider choose your doctor

(1. Please tell me if I have missed anything. 2. If you are trying to fix any one of these or other obsolete ideas in the healthcare system anywhere, please get in touch)