What health care systems are at the forefront of using systems engineering?
Three providers come to mind: the Veterans Health Administration, Kaiser Permanente and the Mayo Clinic. The first two are alike in that they have salaried physicians and are combined vertically as both payer and provider. The Mayo Clinic has been a health care pioneer since 1911 when the Mayo brothers recognized the importance of developing one medical record that could follow the patient and had the clinic and its information system designed to accomplish this. Some 85 years later Mayo Clinic took another step forward with digital radiology and the automated medical record—and found that physicians could see more patients per day and provide higher quality care because all the information they needed was at their fingertips. In addition, with this automation, Mayo saved 152 FTEs [full-time equivalents] over a 12-month period. Q: What fields should health care look to for examples of innovative systems engineering success stories? A: It is worth examining the changes in the financial
