Indicator management rears its ugly head, again …

Two nurses in Staffordshire (England) are under investigation for having misreported waiting times in their hospital’s emergency room. For example, to get patients out of the waiting room (and therefore classify them as having been served), the nurses would transfer them to rooms that were not ready to receive patients. Their motivation appears to have been indicator targets set for them by hospital administration. The BBC has the story here. A reader of The Blue Line Imperative would hardly be surprised.