Making a Better World
Do you think that the world needs improvement? If so, then
consider this -- improvement only occurs in an environment in which
improvement is the only viable alternative. Right now, neither
business nor service professionals are subjected to any form of
quality control. Businesses in every town are free to offer poor
quality products and to mistreat customers with complete impunity.
Physicians are free to misdiagnose patients, to offer them harmful
and often useless drugs, and to insult them and humiliate them when
they are sick and vulnerable, without any system of accountability.
Every community needs a Quality Control Center-- a place where
people can call and register their complaints. A Quality Control
Center could be a single phone line with an answering machine, and a
few people who would be willing to tally the complaints and make this
information available to the public. If people in your area had a
Quality Control Center, they could find out which stores had the most
complaints registered against them and something about the nature of
those complaints. They could find out similar information about
doctors and lawyers and other service professionals which could be
extremely helpful in choosing a physician or a dentist.
If you would like to open a Quality Control center in your
community, here are a few simple guidelines:
- Let the people of your area know what you are doing. List your
Quality Control phone line in easy to find places.
- Remember that a certain number of people are never satisfied, so
everyone should receive a similar number of complaints called the
floor of random complaints.
- Note that 2 or 3 businesses or physicians will rise up out of
that floor with larger numbers of complaints.
- Some people could try to abuse the service. Smith's Hardware
company, for example, could register a large number of complaints
against the Jones' Hardware Company. Error checking can be done with
a postcard to the person registering the complaint.
- Take into consideration the size of the business. Let us say that
Smith has 3,000 square feet of space while Jones has 1,000 square
feet. Smith potentially draws more customers and should register more
complaints.
- Wait a full year before publishing your results in order to let
the random floor of complaints settle, and to allow the few who show
more additional complaints to rise up out of that floor.
We suggest that Quality Control Centers begin by evaluating the
physicians in each community. The fact that a person has an M.D.
after his or her name does not make that person a good doctor. Most
physicians today have entered the practice of medicine for the money.
Many doctors are much more interested in receiving a call from their
stockbrokers than from their patients. People rarely question a
physician's competence or effectiveness, and often feel humiliated
and intimidated by a simple office visit. Some physicians in this
country should have to wear a warning label that reads:
"Treatment by this physician could be hazardous to your
health." Let us stop grading young, vulnerable children who need
our support--not our grades; and let us start grading the businesses
and "service" professionals that could use our grades in
order to improve the quality of their efforts.
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