AHS/healthcare system debacles

[speedog]

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Its easy enough to blame the outsourcing when its the union who caused it in the first place.

Batteries never stale dated in TELUS' own warehouses manned by their unionized workers.

[dirtsniffer]

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Batteries never stale dated in TELUS' own warehouses manned by their unionized workers.

The company i work for has several plants in north america with about half being union facilities. Same FTQ and same safety record but higher costs and lower production flexibility. There is a reason the last 2 plants closed have both been union facilities.

[speedog]

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The company i work for has several plants in north america with about half being union facilities. Same FTQ and same safety record but higher costs and lower production flexibility. There is a reason the last 2 plants closed have both been union facilities.

I'm only speaking to what I know first hand, as such it's not something I'm going to debate with you. I did state other things regarding outsourcing but you conveniently did some cherry picking.

[JRSC00LUDE]

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Outsourcing is not necessarily the end all to beat all

Agreed, but some things make more sense. The biggest problem I've seen with outsourcing is people don't understand how to manage it after. There still have to be checks, balances and performance requirements. Being a private contractor shouldn't absolve you from the responsibility of maintaining the right environment and, when you hire the right QUALIFIED private contractor you don't face those issues or, you fire them and replace them. Outsourcing the wrong factor, or outsourcing based purely on the lowest bid (which is also often a mistake) are where the biggest issues lie in my opinion.

It seems to be worse in government, because they don't even know how to run a Unionized shop properly let alone a private one. As much as I specifically despise Government Unions, I understand that you can't/shouldn't blindly outsource everything - that is more due to the incompetence of government, than the competence of a Union. We've built a real shit platform for ourselves in this country that won't likely be improved upon. The teardown cost to rebuild would be too significant.

[dirtsniffer]

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I'm only speaking to what I know first hand, as such it's not something I'm going to debate with you. I did state other things regarding outsourcing but you conveniently did some cherry picking.

Ya my bad, I had a few whiskeys last night

[kertejud2]

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Agreed, but some things make more sense. The biggest problem I've seen with outsourcing is people don't understand how to manage it after. There still have to be checks, balances and performance requirements. Being a private contractor shouldn't absolve you from the responsibility of maintaining the right environment and, when you hire the right QUALIFIED private contractor you don't face those issues or, you fire them and replace them. Outsourcing the wrong factor, or outsourcing based purely on the lowest bid (which is also often a mistake) are where the biggest issues lie in my opinion.

When they're coming up with plans to show the biggest cost savings possible (combined with the less overt but still not all that secret desire to degrade public service to necessitate more privatization) do you think the performance requirements or the lowest bid will be the driver behind the desire to outsource?

[bjstare]

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Outsourcing is not necessarily the end all to beat all, a few years after I left TELUS they decided to outsource their warehouse operations. Yeah, TELUS' warehouse people were well paid for the work they did but those same people did care about the work they did but the bean counters that were couldn't see the value these people brought to TELUS. Over the years I have stayed in touch with a handful of TELUS employees and the problems this warehouse outsourcing created for TELUS was quite something.

Batteries worth millions of dollars that had to be scrapped because the contracted warehouse operation didn't rotate new and old stock so old stock went out to the central offices first - million of dollars that went stale on the warehouse shelves. Projects worth millions that missed dates because the contracted warehouse operations couldn't find equipment - missed dates that cost TELUS dearly because customer project dates couldn't be met.

TELUS is also outsourcing a lot of it's technical design work overseas which is also proving to be problematic because site visits are no longer performed by design techs because overseas which is resulting in tons of rework because of poor designs.

Now I'm not saying all outsourcing is bad, TELUS certainly didn't have to be in the business of cafeterias or cleaning or painting but some operations shouldn't be outsourced even though they may appear on the surface to not be a part of the core of what a company does.

Says the career union guy. Not saying you're full of shit, but definitely saying you are definitely biased.

[speedog]

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Says the career union guy. Not saying you're full of shit, but definitely saying you are definitely biased.

Hah, haven't been in a union position for well over 12 years and actually have been employed as a sole proprietorship subcontractor for almost 5 years now. Ya gots to keep up young'un.

[pheoxs]

All I know is every single project I've been on where we outsourced things, it went to shit and then we ended up spending more trying to recover things. But maybe that's just bad project management.

[suntan]

We've outsourced lots of things - most of our accounting, we're moving services over to Azure, we haven't had an on-prem mail server in eons, lots of our data entry is done overseas.

The fact is lots of any company's operations are outsourced, people just don't realize it because they have very narrow minded thinking.

It's not like Telus was selling their own branded phones. Jesus they're a telecommunications company, shouldn't they build the products that they sell??

[ExtraSlow]

Nobody should have an on premises server for anything ever.

[Tik-Tok]

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All I know is every single project I've been on where we outsourced things, it went to shit and then we ended up spending more trying to recover things. But maybe that's just bad project management.

Annnd you just hit the nail on the head. The problem with government outsourcing is that there is no good government management to oversee it. Also every single business is going to suck the government teet even harder than the unions do. There will be half the jobs, but will cost the government almost the same amount.

It's pretty altruistic to think these businesses aren't going to rape the system.

[davidI]

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Annnd you just hit the nail on the head. The problem with government outsourcing is that there is no good government management to oversee it. Also every single business is going to suck the government teet even harder than the unions do. There will be half the jobs, but will cost the government almost the same amount.

It's pretty altruistic to think these businesses aren't going to rape the system.

The pentagon contracting out so many of its defence contracts is a pretty good example of that. You still have government shills approving the invoices - and a lot of the time they're going to take a nice lucrative role in the private sector with the same companies they were previously approving costs for.

[suntan]

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Nobody should have an on premises server for anything ever.

By on-prem I mean our on-prem servers that are in a colo. The only local servers we have are for dev/staging etc (just a bunch of VMs on one box actually) and a NAS (for now).

- - - Updated - - -

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Annnd you just hit the nail on the head. The problem with government outsourcing is that there is no good government management to oversee it. Also every single business is going to suck the government teet even harder than the unions do. There will be half the jobs, but will cost the government almost the same amount.

It's pretty altruistic to think these businesses aren't going to rape the system.

Working with gov't employees is a huge pain in the ass. One of the clients is a gov't organization and when we have meetings with them, 12 people from them show up. 9 don't say a word.

[JRSC00LUDE]

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When they're coming up with plans to show the biggest cost savings possible (combined with the less overt but still not all that secret desire to degrade public service to necessitate more privatization) do you think the performance requirements or the lowest bid will be the driver behind the desire to outsource?

Agreed, they do it wrong. The entire system needs a ground up rebuild to become efficient and it isn't going to happen.

[msommers]

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It's pretty altruistic to think these businesses aren't going to rape the system.

Had some interesting discussions last night with a friend about Vets and pharmacies. Apparently, you can ask for a prescription from your vet (obviously for your pet) and take that to any compounding pharmacy and pay significantly less than through the vet. Which brought up, point 2. Apparently Coop is losing money on the grocery and using the pharmacists to encourage all clients to have ongoing and often "Medication Reviews" with patients. Apparently they can charge this service back to the province.

There are tons of docs that get into health care entirely for the money. In fact the question is blatantly asked at UofC "put up your hand if you're here for the prestige and earning potential" and at half the new class put up their hands lol. I can only assume every single Dermatologist gets into it for the money haha

[suntan]

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Had some interesting discussions last night with a friend about Vets and pharmacies. Apparently, you can ask for a prescription from your vet (obviously for your pet) and take that to any composing pharmacy and pay significantly less than through the vet. Which brought up, point 2. Apparently Coop is losing money on the grocery and using the pharmacists to encourage all clients to have ongoing and often "Medication Reviews" with patients. Apparently they can charge this service back to the province.

There are tons of docs that get into health care entirely for the money. In fact the question is blatantly asked at UofC "put up your hand if your here for the prestige and earning potential" and at half the new class put up their hands lol. I can only assume every single Dermatologist gets into it for the money haha

[g-m]

Why else would you spend 9 years and tens of thousands of dollars? Out of a genuine desire to help your fellow man on the cheap?

Get real

[R-Audi]

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. Apparently Coop is losing money on the grocery and using the pharmacists to encourage all clients to have ongoing and often "Medication Reviews" with patients. Apparently they can charge this service back to the province.

Not to de-rail the thread... but CoOp makes a majoritty of their money on gas, booze, weed and real estate. Groceries just keep the lights on.

[suntan]

Yeah apparently groceries are break-even or lose money. Big part of the reason they changed suppliers. They have the whitest groceries evar. It's a miracle they carry ginger and Sapparo Ichiban.