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Myth #2: The Healthcare System Can Be Fixed by Clever Social Engineering

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Abstract

Can we—or anyone else—disagree sincerely with this demythologizing exercise carried out by Henry Mintzberg? In conferences, meetings and teaching classes we discuss emblematic cases from all the most developed countries about ambitious, top-down, advised-by-experts plans of action aimed at fixing the health care ecosystem that actually fell very short of their promise. In many of these cases health care professionals are depicted as indifferent—if not resistant—to any request of change that do not come from them. These anecdotes should probably confirm that socially engineered, “silver-bullet,” solutions are not able to promote long-lasting improvements in health care and are likely to be rapidly abandoned.

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Correspondence to Emanuele Lettieri , Corrado Cuccurullo or Fernando Giancotti .

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Lettieri, E., Masella, C., Cuccurullo, C., Giancotti, F. (2018). Myth #2: The Healthcare System Can Be Fixed by Clever Social Engineering. In: Adinolfi, P., Borgonovi, E. (eds) The Myths of Health Care. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53600-2_5

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