Anyone who has had the misfortune of using the emergency services of a hospital, especially in Canada, has had first hand experience with one of the most dysfunctional systems. It is hard to imagine anyone creating a more inefficient and disorganized means for operating emergency departments.

I have joked in the past that emergency departments seem to be run on the Darwinian principle that if you survive long enough to see a doctor, perhaps you deserve to be treated.

While there are many problems here, two in particular stand out. The first is that when a patient is admitted, no one in the emergency department or anywhere else in the hospital is assigned to that patient. The patient might be given a number, like a FedEx package. However, unlike a FedEx package whose progress can be monitored in real time and online, no one really monitors the progress of a patient through the emergency department. When there are shift changes, many patients simply fall between the cracks. Their records may be on a computer, but rarely does anyone on the new shift really know what has been done for the patient and what the next steps should be.

A second problem in Canada is the lack of digital medical records. If everyone’s medical records were available online and were up-to-date at all times, including a record of their medications and family histories, and intelligent software were available to diagnose every patient; whenever someone was admitted to an emergency department, an initial diagnosis could be available within minutes. The software could prescribe the most appropriate tests, which would be done quickly under the auspices of the person made accountable for that patient, and the software could analyze the results immediately.

While software might be prone to making mistakes, the frequency and degree of inaccuracy of the mistakes likely would be less than when a physician alone is involved in examining a patient.

Patients could be prioritized by the software, and the doctors on call would see the patients in the order recommended by the software. Furthermore, the doctors would have a very good idea of the problems when they first meet their patients.

The right combination of technology and accountability might greatly reduce wait times in emergency rooms, improve outcomes and save money.

But these problems are not specific to emergency departments. They are quite common in many industries. For example, while the likelihood of anyone having her/his luggage lost or damaged when traveling on an airline is quite low, most of us have had the this unfortunate experience. Whenever this happens, the poor traveler must file a report and then is assigned a number — the ubiquitous number. Supposedly by using  this number, the poor soul should be able to follow in real time the progress of the airline in repairing or finding the luggage. If airlines used RFID technology rather than barcodes, they might not only be able to reduce the incidence of lost luggage, but they also might be able to figure out in a much shorter period of time where the luggage might actually be.

When the passenger tries to reach a human supposedly employed by the airline, s/he is unlikely to reach the same person with whom s/he filed the initial report or spoke to on a later occasion to learn more about the status of the luggage. Just as in the emergency departments, the airlines do not assign each passenger to a specific employee who would be responsible for fixing the problem as quickly as possible. Passengers fall between the cracks, especially when there are shift changes.

Companies and institutions such as hospitals could greatly improve the quality of their services and better serve their customers if they invested in the right technology and made their employees accountable to their customers.

The opinions expressed in this blog are personal and do not reflect the views of either Global Brief or the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs.