At Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. (SMG) an employee was fired for failing a drug test—the drug was nicotine! “How do executives looking to cut medical costs persuade employees to take better care of themselves without killing morale and spawning lawsuits?” Company-provided health insurance became prevalent during World War II and company-funded health insurance has been steadily becoming less prevalent since. Health insurance is a large part of most company’s budget and, historically, companies have used carrots such as lower premiums, free gym memberships, etc. to persuade employees to become more healthy thus decreasing company’s health costs. More recently, companies such as Scotts have instituted a sticks approach, such as higher premiums for not submitting to exhaustive health testing and not following personalized programs drawn up from the results of one’s health testing, to getting employees more healthy. The principal behind Scotts program is admirable but the means of telling people what to eat and when to exercise, etc. is downright Orwellian and probably a drag on morale (by taking away people’s control over their own lives) in most cases.

A young woman, Jesica Santillan, died an avoidable death because she was mistakenly received transplanted heart and lungs from a donor with a blood type that did not match. The surgeon, James Jaggers, admitted “I am ultimately responsible.” for not checking Jesica’s blood type. The hospital’s system of check failed as well for not catching the surgeon’s error in time. As well, U.S. News and World Report found that the entire national organ-transplant system played a role. Typos and errors were found to be common in match lists. Match list coordinators are instructed not to involve themselves in medical decisions; it may have helped catch the blood match error had these coordinators been able and encouraged to be more involved in the whole of the process. Along the chain of events that led to the error, there were also other people whose jobs appeared to be ‘compartmentalized’ which costed them the opportunity to catch the error. Sharing information (not just pieces and parts) and doing away with ‘not my job’ attitudes may have made for a different outcome in this case. The donor organs were clearly marked “Type A” but nobody in the operating room knew Jesica’s blood type of “O”. In the end, these grave errors, cost a young woman’s life but motivated the medical system to overhaul and put new safeguards, such as multiple checks and verifications, etc. into the organ transplant system. Errors and failures can certainly become strong motivation for improvement.