What If We Treated People Like Patients, Not Paperwork?

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BY BOB GALLAGHER MTWX EDITORIAL TEAM

No one cries when they hear the word “bureaucracy.”

But try sitting beside your mother on a plastic chair in an ER hallway for nine hours. Try watching a nurse wipe away tears in a supply closet because she’s working a double shift again. Try waiting six months for a specialist—only to be discharged without a diagnosis.

That’s what this system is doing to people.

And the tragedy is: we already know what’s wrong. The issue isn’t mystery—it’s moral failure.

We don’t need more task forces. We need to remove the roadblocks between care and the people who deliver it. We don’t need more press conferences. We need a plan. We don’t need more spin. We need a spine.

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🧠 RETHINKING THE MODEL

Bureaucrats shuffle paper. Governments blame. And front-line workers pick up the pieces.

We’re watching the Peter Principle unfold in real time. In a system this complex, people often rise to their level of incompetence—not because they’re unqualified, but because they’re unprepared to lead.

The further someone gets from the patient, the less likely they are to understand what care really looks like. And so we end up with meetings instead of movement, memos instead of medicine.

What if we flipped that?

What if we rebuilt healthcare using the O.O.D.A. Loop—Observe, Orient, Decide, Act—so it stayed adaptive, not reactive?

What if we asked front-line workers what they need before telling them what to do?

What if leadership meant removing barriers instead of adding more oversight?

We need less supervision and more support.
We need fewer permission slips and more permission to lead.
We need to trust the people who do the work—not the ones who slow it down.

This isn’t about efficiency. It’s about empathy. And it’s about designing a system that works as well as the people inside it.

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💡 A BETTER WAY FORWARD

Let’s build a system that actually cares about care.

✅ Less micromanagement. More trust.
✅ Less politics. More action.
✅ Less performance. More purpose.

And most of all: let’s stop measuring success by how well we hide the pain—and start measuring it by how many people heal.

Because the system isn’t supposed to be the story. The patient is.

And if we can’t lead with compassion, then we don’t deserve to lead at all.

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— Bob Gallagher
bob.gallagher@mtwx.ca