Resource

I was silent for a moment because I remained uneasy with what my friend said. Finally, I saw light.

“My friend, extra-terrestrials need the information – for resource allocation I suppose.”

“Front line staff on earth are sent to hell exactly for that idea of all those mollusk outside the solar system. To the latter, data could be generated without any effort. But, my friend, the real point is, diagnosis coding could not be used for resource allocation." L suddenly became serious, "Within the same hospital and amongst different departments, how can you compare the complexity of a patient with a complicated heart problem to another with a rare cancer? If you are talking about budget decision amongst hospitals, how could you tell a unit that performs more complex surgery is having more difficult patients, but the problems are not created by the surgeons themselves? In fact, by the law of physics, any objective measurement of clinical activity could not be used for resource allocation!”

“Why on earth?” I could not believe my ears.

“Because each coin has two sides,” he said slowly, “Should we award more resources to a unit that performs well so that it excels, or give more money to another department that has a whole lot of problems so that it could improve? The irony is, when it comes to money, all problems become political - not economic - ones."