Triple

Shortly after dinning with the man who used to have a moustache, I attended another gangsters' meeting.

As always, the topic we discussed was triple insufficiency - the classical triad of Hospital Authority Syndrome:

1. not enough money
2. not enough manpower
3. not enough hospital bed

The delicacy of this very syndrome is solving one problem but leaving the others untouched would not help the situation - it actually makes things worse.

For example, giving a department more hospital beds only could only mean disaster if the manpower stays the same. To go one step further, if a department has more beds and staff but the budget does not increase correspondingly, how on earth do you think the extra patients could be treated?

Well, the situation is equally interesting if you give a department more money but no increase in manpower and hospital bed.

But this is not the worst - there is always something even worse.

Let me tell you tomorrow.