Healthcare designed discomfort

02/21/13 23:38:00    

By Michael Mealling

So I'm spending the night in a hospital room sitting up with my mother who's here for something that should turn out to be easily fixable. That means I'm sitting (and soon to be sleeping) in some of the most uncomfortable furniture ever designed by humans.

This is the moment that you realize that neither you, nor the person in the hospital bed, are the customer. If you were then this chair would look more like this:

and less like this:

Sleep deprivation wouldn't be an issue, there would be more outlets, and the coffee wouldn't suck as badly. As the saying goes, “If you're not paing for it then you are the product”. In this case the Government or an insurance company are the customers and patients are mearly an accounting issue. Where the patient IS the customer services improve. And when that service directly translates to improving someone else's health it seeems like it should border on malpractice.

And now I'm going to try and sleep in something even the Spanish Inquisition wouldn't expect.