{"id":6327,"date":"2015-01-20T12:21:46","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T04:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/?p=6327"},"modified":"2017-01-08T18:34:06","modified_gmt":"2017-01-08T10:34:06","slug":"defaulting-pharmaceutical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/defaulting-pharmaceutical\/","title":{"rendered":"Defaulting to the Pharmaceutical"},"content":{"rendered":"
~ Take a couple of Aspirin and come see me in the morning ~ A Doctor<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Recently, NUS Business School produced a video<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>which featured, besides Singapore Airlines and one or two other companies, the Narayana Hrudayalaya Heart Hospital in Bangalore, India. What had happened was that the hospital had industrialized\u00a0open-heart surgery to the nth degree, resulting in far better recovery rates delivered at much lower cost than in either the US or Singapore. Infants requiring heart surgery were given individualized care on a 24-hour basis, meaning each infant had one or two nurses assigned just to that infant. In effect, the nurses undertook the role of surrogate mothers. This would cost a lot less than having an infant come back to the Operating Theater for more surgery due to complications likely to arise from other than individualized care.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n In cases like that, specialization is of course the way to go. However, open-heart surgery is not typical life. It does not have to be and it should not be. This post is called “Defaulting to the Pharmaceutical” because that is exactly how we behave in everyday life. We look for specialists for basically everything. Child care, meals, cleaning, laundry, health, spirituality, mirth, you name it. We do this in the name of “progress”, so that we can then be “freed” to pursue “the finer things in life.” Rubbish. Most of the time it is for self-indulgence, for avarice, in fact. People are not designed to live on narrow fronts. We are designed to function on broad fronts, having a wide variety of interests and perhaps indulging a few of those interests at different seasons of life. For most people, outsourcing basic functions would not be for the sake of seeking a higher order for the good of mankind. It would be following the philosophy of convenience for one-of-a-kind.<\/span><\/p>\n