Defective PPE Received and Distributed

FROM RTE: https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0403/1128300-ppe-covid-19-ireland/

No QC at point of receipt or no accurate specs on orders? Dail printer all over again? No comment yet from HSE or Ministers or than sycophantic response to suppliers.
Speaking to senior healthcare worker again (yesterday very disheartened with gear) today she's not as despondent a lot of gear although not up to standard they are used to she describes as functional.Up to yesterday they had been completely out for few days and says they are glad of it as it's all they can get
 
when this was commented on at the news bulletin a side comment about how many countries are trying to get all that's available and so a consignment destined for France was grappled by the USA instead
 
I'm sure the HSE could have been much more specific in what they wanted and sent a team over to China to do QC checks before confirming the order. And the result, we would now have very little PPE in the country.

As Michael Ryan WHO said:

"The problem in society we have at the moment is that everyone is afraid of making a mistake. Everyone is afraid of the consequence of error.

But the greatest error is not to move. The greatest error is to be paralysed by the fear of failure.

Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management

Speed trumps perfection."
 
I'm sure the HSE could have been much more specific in what they wanted and sent a team over to China to do QC checks before confirming the order. And the result, we would now have very little PPE in the country.

As Michael Ryan WHO said:

"The problem in society we have at the moment is that everyone is afraid of making a mistake. Everyone is afraid of the consequence of error.

But the greatest error is not to move. The greatest error is to be paralysed by the fear of failure.

Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management

Speed trumps perfection."

That quote really sums up my thoughts on this to be honest. You're not going to get it 100% right but you're going to get it right enough that you keep moving forward and you deal with issues as they arise.

The HSE have managed to secure the equivalent of 13 years worth of PPE in a matter of weeks, during a global shortage. If they need to work with the supplier so that part of that order needs to be replaced so be it. It sounds like a big win to me.
 
To be fair it's probably a little bit more than a part of it .A part of it is completely unusable I presume it's the short sleeved garments .There were no respiratory masks just plain covers basically and the overall quality was way behind what our frontline is used to. A lot of the issue is they won't say it straight up.
 
That quote really sums up my thoughts on this to be honest. You're not going to get it 100% right but you're going to get it right enough that you keep moving forward and you deal with issues as they arise.
Everything has a context and in the HSE we have an organisation that has been out of control since Mary Harney set it up, has never met budget targets, has a history of secrecy and lying, has killed its clients and left other seriously ill and damaged but refuses time and again to admit wrong and closes ranks when wrong-doing and incompetence is highlighted - no-one gets fired.

We don't know how much of the €208m order for PPE is useless/defective and we don't know the full consequences of such defects.

The HSE have managed to secure the equivalent of 13 years worth of PPE in a matter of weeks, during a global shortage. If they need to work with the supplier so that part of that order needs to be replaced so be it. It sounds like a big win to me.
I'd hate to think what a loss looked like. "Let's be seen to do something, anything, sure it'll be grand."
 
Everything has a context and in the HSE we have an organisation that has been out of control since Mary Harney set it up, has never met budget targets, has a history of secrecy and lying, has killed its clients and left other seriously ill and damaged but refuses time and again to admit wrong and closes ranks when wrong-doing and incompetence is highlighted - no-one gets fired.

We don't know how much of the €208m order for PPE is useless/defective and we don't know the full consequences of such defects.

I'd hate to think what a loss looked like. "Let's be seen to do something, anything, sure it'll be grand."

The HSE has systemic problems that is undoubtedly true. But yes, we absolutely had to do something and do it quickly or risk having a completely crippled health system (that would be quite a big loss). In a crisis you move fast and deal with issues as they arise and leave your media people deal with the commentators who through various degrees of naiveté and malice expect everything to be solved as cleanly as you might see in a 90 minute action movie.

You're right, we do not know how much of the order is defective. What we do know is only a small fraction has been delivered, not all of it is defective and they are working to ensure the rest of the order is right (I imagine, for example, it will be very easy to just make the rest of the gowns with longer sleeves).

Also worth pointing out there is more than just the HSE involved in this. The IDA had a key role too apparently.
 
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HSE management sitting proudly in front of their PPE stock at press briefing now
 
HSE management sitting proudly in front of their PPE stock at press briefing now

They are announcing the result of their review of the first couple of flights:
  • 65% good to use
  • 15% not ideal but will be used unless alternative is found
  • 20% unusable
 
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Prof Cormican said that the 20% won't be used by health care professionals but they can find other use for it e.g. masks with elastic ear loops not recommended for use by HCPs but could be used by patients/ public in risk situations
 
Flights that arrived last week represent 10 of 300 flights that are planned over coming months with PPE. Work being done to ensure future deliveries don't have the 35% of order with issues.
 
based on what john luc says about ppe getting diverted no guarantee we may get full order if someone else willing to pay higher price for it
 
What are the chances of the HSE, its process designers or product and service suppliers getting to Six Sigma standards of excellence. For those unfamiliar with it, the widely accepted definition of a Six Sigma process is a process that produces 3.4 Defective Parts (or non-conforming outcomes) per Million Opportunities or DPMO.

Six Sigma aims to deliver yields of 99.99966% unlike the latest HSE debacle with the PPE which we are told produced a yield of 65%, no where near good enough for a modern healthcare organisation. Excuses like the HSE and its employees are operating under pressure is not a reason for failure to deliver excellence, it is merely a very poor excuse. Doing routine work in a normal environment is just that, routine, stress free, repetitive, day-to-day operations. Operating to a standard of excellence in a non-routine environment is called managing.

Any chance any of their director of this, manager of that, co-ordinator of something amorphous and meaningless that can't be measured will ever get to sigma seven levels of delivery? Based on their own performance measures using the PPE numbers their DPMO is somewhere between 691,462 and 308,538; Sigma Six would be 3.4 and sigma seven 0.019.
 
Also out of that 65 per cent good to go they will have to retrain for use of most of it.I don't care what anyone says but I know the visors looked like they were out of a lucky bag, flimsy to say least and I didn't see any sign of 3 quarter sleeve gowns are they also in 65 per cent .
 
Everything has a context and in the HSE we have an organisation that has been out of control since Mary Harney set it up, has never met budget targets, has a history of secrecy and lying, has killed its clients and left other seriously ill and damaged but refuses time and again to admit wrong and closes ranks when wrong-doing and incompetence is highlighted - no-one gets fired.
In fairness the HSE was just a reorganisation of what was there. The culture of lying, waste, incompetence and killing its clients was there in the healthcare sector long before the HSE was formed.
 
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What are the chances of the HSE, its process designers or product and service suppliers getting to Six Sigma standards of excellence. For those unfamiliar with it, the widely accepted definition of a Six Sigma process is a process that produces 3.4 Defective Parts (or non-conforming outcomes) per Million Opportunities or DPMO.

Six Sigma aims to deliver yields of 99.99966% unlike the latest HSE debacle with the PPE which we are told produced a yield of 65%, no where near good enough for a modern healthcare organisation. Excuses like the HSE and its employees are operating under pressure is not a reason for failure to deliver excellence, it is merely a very poor excuse. Doing routine work in a normal environment is just that, routine, stress free, repetitive, day-to-day operations. Operating to a standard of excellence in a non-routine environment is called managing.

Any chance any of their director of this, manager of that, co-ordinator of something amorphous and meaningless that can't be measured will ever get to sigma seven levels of delivery? Based on their own performance measures using the PPE numbers their DPMO is somewhere between 691,462 and 308,538; Sigma Six would be 3.4 and sigma seven 0.019.
The issues with the Health Service run far deeper than this issue with PPE. We need to stop talking about the HSE as if it is some organisation that sits on top of the hospitals and that it is the root cause of the problems with the healthcare system. The hospitals and the doctors and nurses and administrators and managers in those hospitals are the HSE.

This is an unprecedented crisis and people are responding in the best way they can but it is hard to suddenly become very productive and proactive after a lifetime of looking for reasons not to do your job properly. It's hard for a bloated inefficient organisation to suddenly become efficient.
This is like someone who spend 20 years eating badly and getting no exercise trying to suddenly run a marathon. They can be as willing and motivated as they like but they still have to drag their fat ass around the circuit.
 
will the 20% unusable be returned?, also its far from ideal having equipment (15%) that really should be in the unusable pile?, healthcare workers deserve better, the HSE press conference coming form a warehouse yesterday was that the unusable equipment in the background?
 
It's there in the public domain. Personal protective equipment is being made at speed in back shed sweat rooms. It's not a secret. Hammer and nails Any amount you need.. thrown in with last months Quality approved. This month will have little protective abilities. This is why healthcare are sick.
 
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