A Cautionary Tale for Healthcare

During my CIO career, I ’ve worked on a few Harvard Business School case studies and I’ve had the “joy” of presenting my failures to Harvard Business school students for over a decade.I enjoy telling stories and inevitably the cases I teach are about turning lemons into lemonade.In this post, I ’d like to tell a story about a recent experience withMarvin Windows and lessons learned that apply to healthcare.  I know that sounds odd, but hear me out.At Unity Farm and Sanctuary I ’m the proud owner of about 100 Marvin windows from the 1990’s.  All are still functional but incorporate nylon parts that eventually dissolve in sunlight.  I needed to replace the nylon pins that hold the screens in place.I did what anyone would do.  I searched the internet for Marvin Top Rail Screen Pin, expecting to find the parts available on Amazon or a Marvin website.  No such luck.  Plenty of “plunger pins” but no top rail pins. I did find anunindexed PDF of a Marvin catalog.  On page 43, I found " Top Rail Screen Pin M120 11867852 ”.  I had a part number so ordering it should be easy, right?I went to the Marvin website looking for a part lookup function, an ordering function, or a customer service app.  No such luck. I did find a corporate 1-800 number on the Contact Us page.After calling that number I was redirected to the web page of a distributor, since Marvin Windows will not sell anything to anyone directly.Two ...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs