ABSTRACT
This chapter is all about queues, queuing, and waiting. Queues are not things of beauty. There is nothing to admire about patients waiting for things to happen. The 1971 film The Hospital is a bitter black comedy about problems with adverse events and delays in hospitals—the sort of problems that Process Redesign is still grappling with today. It starred the late George C. Scott and had screenplay by the playwright and screen writer, Paddy Chayefsky. During the course of the film, a nurse is rendered unconscious and her assailant has to find somewhere to keep her. He leaves her on a stretcher in the X-ray waiting area. Why the X-ray area? Because, according to the film, a sedated body lying around for 5 hours would not seem unusual.
