Thread by @patio11

I am endlessly fascinated by my annual physical in Tokyo, which is staffed by approximately 15 nurses and 2 doctors and apparently has probably 180-200 patients an hour throughout, entirely through good process design.

Everyone is constantly in a hurry but no one is rushing,

You do a tiny bit of prework to fill out a scantronned medical history. You get issued a number (for patient privacy) and lead to a waiting room. For next 90 minutes you listen as a string of nurses call your number and lead you off to separate room for diagnostics.

Unfailingly polite, rushing but not hurried, and you get X Ray/basic vitals/blood drawn/barium test/etc, with optional upsell (only via paper onset, thankfully) for a bunch of things you might be worried about that only take another blood vial.

I will add that the place Stripe sends us to us both a) proficient in English and b) doesn’t assume that every foreign patient is necessarily illiterate, which seems like a low bar but puts it ahead of 99% of my medical experiences here.

Test results back in a few weeks via mail and in a fairly standardized format so you can take to your usual doctor or a doctor of your choice for follow-up. (For the high percentage things they can also do a followup with you.)

There’s a few visions of what routine healthcare would look like in a prosperous nation and I sort of like this one.

Baumol’s Cost Disease: “everything is terrible all the time” is not the only equilibrium.