You must have read my post on the very good and kind king, who reigned centuries ago, and started a hospital for the poor people to give them state of the art healthcare. If not, read all about it here. The population of the kingdom increased because of the excellent healthcare given at the hospital (low death rate caused that). So he had to start three more such hospitals. The king did not want all the hassle of managing these hospitals himself. So he decided to appoint a master manager. The system he developed was so perfect that it went down in the history of the country as one which would remain applicable for ever. Its outline is as follows.
- The king appointed the oldest courtier (अमात्य) in his court (दरबार) for doing this work, believing the oldest one would be the wisest one. This was based on the universal belief that people gathered knowledge and wisdom as they aged.
- The oldest person in the king's court (दरबार) could be from any specialty - carpentry, plumbing, oil well drilling, pothole filling, trading, jugglery, gossiping, politicking, and whatever else one could think of doing. This was a democratic process of giving equal opportunity to all.
- The master manager was required to make decisions on everything, including medical decision making, procuring medicines and equipment, human resource management, discipline and whatever else that happened in the king's hospitals. This made the management truly 'out of the box', the likes of which could not be found anywhere else in the world.
- The master manager was guided constantly on all matters by the elected representatives of the people. This made the healthcare truly democratic, where the people could decide if they should have their appendices out, or H1N1 tablets in, whether they should have cesarean section or abortion, whether the healthcare providers really understood what they were doing, or people knew better.
- The master manager had his own coterie, whose most important job was to praise his actions, and criticize everyone who had other thoughts on that matter. This helped identify stupid people who could not make out which side of the bread was buttered. The master manager could then devote his time and energy to improving such people.
- If not so knowledgeable healthcare providers from obscure corners of the kingdom told patients to go to these big hospitals and get specific treatment, the patients expected exactly that treatment, irrespective of whether the specialists thought that another form of treatment was better. Peoples' representatives and the master manager had full powers to take the specialists to task for not doing what people wanted done to themselves.
- The master manager automatically acquired special powers after appointment to that position, so that he could decide who was in error without inquiring into the matter. This shortened the process of inquiries and reduced costs tremendously.
