The strong link vs. the weak link approach to healthcare

How to address the weak-link problem and how to overcome the potential issues that arise from it. We are aware of the idiom - a chain is only as strong as its weakest link - first appeared in Thomas Reid’s “Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man,” published in 1786. The idiom refers to personal or technical failure in a team due to one component rather than an actual chain.

There was an application of the idiom along with the continuous quality improvement (CQI) approach shared by Malcolm Gladwell. CQI, as shared by Gladwell, is about the strong-link system (Morse, 2020) that the US healthcare system has been using for over 50 years. He identified the strong-link approach to how healthcare funded its growth, primarily through funding research. According to a Research America report (2017) investments in medical and health research and development grew 20.6 percent between 2013 and 2016, although R&D spending only accounts for a modest portion of the total $3.5 trillion of U.S. health expenditures. However, even with strong funding for healthcare research, a flaw was soon discovered in the global health system and in the US, specifically when the COVID-19 Pandemic struck in 2020.

The weak link that Gladwell saw was in how the US responded to the pandemic. We know that the supply chain could not support the need for the basic personal protective equipment (PPE) needed to allow front-line medical workers to safely address the crisis.

According to Ricketts (2008) the weakest link determines the strength of the entire chain, and if we also juxtapose our COVID-19 experience with the Chain Analogy, we will see the failure. Even while the activities of strengthening the other links (i.e research, quarantines, etc. ) but not address the supply chain for the PPEs, will have no impact on improving the entire chain.

Reference

Ricketts, J. (2008). Reaching the goal (pp. 18-19). IBM Press.