My first election coming up

For the first time in my life I am eligible to vote and at a location where I can. On June 6th, CA has a primary election where there are a couple of propositions on the ballot too. I got a call yesterday from a LA Times pollster asking me a ton of questions. He made me realize that I better bone up and get educated on the local issues. For those of you wh0 havent done so, here is a link to the secretary of state's information booklet.

Mostly it seemed like the pollster wanted to know whether I thought any of the democrats could beat Arnold Schwarzenegger. Other questions included whether I could name recognize a bunch of people. Except for Senators Fienstein and Boxer, I dont think I recognized the rest.

But what I think about the main political issues is that californians have not been well served by their elected leaders. Hence they have resorted to propositions to circumvent the elected leadership. Unfortunately since most of the people are apathetic and dont vote, the propostions get used by special interests to get bad and binding decisions.

I think it was a very bad decision to put a cap on the property taxes. Home owners should pay taxes proportionate to the value of their asset. This would raise most of the money necessary for the state to function. More importantly I think it would lead to a significant cooling in housing prices.

Wine Tasting & Jazz Film Noir in the city!

Went to a great wine tasting in the city today. Hopped on the train in the afternoon to meet a bunch of people at Ghirardelli Square. The event was Uncorked!. For about $35 you get to see a bunch of wineries (quite eclectic ones) along the street close to the square.

The day was one of those brilliant sunny days in San Franciso, an ideal day to go drink wine. Every now and then we would go off to the steps on the waters edge and watch the bay swimmers as well as the many sail boats. We tasted some great wine and got a very good deal on an excellent cabernet.

I then capped the day off with another one of my favorite combinations: Film Noir and Jazz. This was a movie series at the Balboa theatre from the SF Jazz Noir film festival. We watched this really well made and well accompanied movie I Want To Live. Susan Hayward gives a very powerful performance as Barbara Graham, the last woman to be executed in California.

After watching this movie, I cannot think of anyone who can still support the death penalty.

Company trip to see the Da Vinci code

We had a company outing to see the Da Vinci Code. I had previosly listenened to the book on a CD and was sorta OK with the movie. While the movie seemed mostly true to the book, it did not seem to capture any of the drama. The characters seemed very flat and the acting seemed sorta tiring. I dont know whose fault it is, but I think they all could have done a better job.

I also realised that as a company outing, movies are inconvenient in getting to know your co-workers. Would much prefer a more active event like bowling or hiking etc..

The Play Pump

Today I watched an amazing episode of PBS Frontline World. Thank you PBS for bringing this amazing quality programming. Among the episodes stories, the one that appealed to me most being engineer myself was the Play Pump.

Trevor Field, a retired advertising executive came up with this amazingly simple idea for helping thousands of african women solve a very important problem: How to get clean water? And he did this with such a simple yet efficient solution: harness the power of children at play. He designed the play pump. This is basically a pump built into a children's merry-go-round. When the children play with the merry-go-round, they actually are causing a pump to work to pull water from bore well and store it in an overhead tank. Check out the full story at the above included link.

I just love such cool engineering solution to some of the world's pressing problems...

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

Thanks to my friend and co-worker Jason, I got a chance to fly to Omaha and attend the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. For those of you who dont know the difference between a stock and a bond, BRK is the holding company of Warren Buffet, the second richest man on the planet.

First about Omaha: I like this town!! Its all very green in spring and the weather is cool.. very pleasant... but very importantly, the people seem very friendly. From my conversations with bar staff and waitresses to my friendly interactions with police officers, I came away with the impression that mid-western hospitality is definitely not a myth.

The BRK annual meeting is a big event held in the Qwest center in downtown omaha. Its quite festive with around 24,000 people in attendance this time. Tip: you need to get there very early to get to ask Warren questions, but you can sleep in if all you want is to see him speak.

Most of the day is a long QA session where Warren and his taciturn partner Charlie Munger answer a variety of questions. The topics ranged from impact of immigration on BRK companies to whether Warren can help his shareholders donate to charity with the same kind of diligence as he picks his companies.

My single biggest lesson: The strategy that Warren uses to pick companies and stock isnt rocket science. Its the incompetance of all those Wall Street analysts who earn enormous salaries but produce returns no better than the S & P that make Warren a super star.

Warren is just a reasonably smart guy who diligently spends his time understanding a company to a minute detail before deciding to invest. He only invests in companies he understands and can predict their performance. Thats why right now he is sitting on a corpus of about $40 billion.. he just hasnt found any good companies to invest in.

I'll write more in another post... am waiting to see what Jason has to say on his experiences..

Inefficiency in doctors offices

I am appalled. I have just returned from a significantly irritating visit to a doctor and a physical therapist. I usually don't have any reason to go to a doctor other than to get a release signed for working out in a gym. This time I had an appointment because I was having issues with my new desk at work. For some reason or another I ended up having to wait 45 mins.

Grrrrr..
Its just amazing that any service provider would treat you so callously as making you wait without any explanation. But most people seemed to accept this as a fact of life that doctor's offices will run late. I think this is because they assume that the doctors are providing the best possible service to other patients and since they would expect similar levels of treatment, this is OK. But what this really does is completely mask the inefficiency in the system.

On time service
Let us look at other services that we receive and the expectations we hold . Let me start with servicing my car. Lets say I have an appointment for 9:00 to have my oil changed. Once I arrive there and sign the paperwork, my car is assigned to a bay and typically work begins on it within 5 mins of my signing the paperwork. Some service stations even allow you to drive up to a bay and get all this service done without even getting out of the car. Customers usually begin to get annoyed if the wait is greater than 15mins before some attention is paid to you. I can think of other services like the bank, legal help etc. where you are seen by appointment and people are served reasonably promptly. So what so special about the doctor's office?

The culprit
Well, some may argue that looking after your body is much more complicated than servicing your car; plus what happens if they find problems with your car which causes it to take more time. What happens to other customers who may have to wait because of this? Typically when this happens, things get juggled around and/or another appointment is made before significantly inconveniencing other customers.

So I would claim that there is nothing special about the doctor's office and I think we should have a similar expectation of prompt treatment. But I'll go further and point who IMHO is the culprit: the front office. The job of the front office is to manage people who come in, arrange for their records to be available and then assign a doctor or guide you to the appropriate doctor if you already have a relationship with one.

Most doctor's front offices seem completely dis-organized. They still seem to be making scheduling appointments using pencil and a date book. A lot of time seems to be spent in looking things up or identifying the right data needed to get the patient's record. Then there is the wait to access the patient's record which is still stored in paper form in some sub-basement somewhere. Only after all the paperwork is assembled, you are added to the queue to see a doctor. If at any of these various steps there is a delay or a mistake then you face significant waits.

Trillions to be saved
I wonder whether we could save trillions if we had somebody like Wal-Mart, FedEx or Xerox look at these processes and streamline them. Here are a few quick suggestions:

1. Understand the workflow for a given patient and enter them into the queue as soon as they enter.
2. Provide mechanisms for patient to help you by giving them the ability to checkin by themselves and verify important data either online or at a kiosk at the office.
3. Provide the patient with constant feedback as to where they are in the process and give them options if there are unforeseen delays. Offer some form of compensation.
4. Train the front office staff to be effecient and evaluate them based on the average wait times at the office.
5. Use technology to significantly speed up the transfer of information from one station to another within the office.

I hope someone is working on these issues and considering suggestions similar to mine. If not, I guess I will have to bite the bullet and look into doing this myself!