How can we attract enough providers?
The shortages of trained medical providers have worsened since 2020, negatively impacting both patients waiting for care and providers. However, increasing the number of medical providers is no easy task, especially as costs are already soaring. The Meta-Problem Method can help navigate the challenges and balance the trade-offs.
Complex problems are often vague and have many possible solutions. The Meta-Problem Method may lead you far away from the dilemma that started your quest. That’s because the method forces you to clarify what you really want and what you are willing to give up. It enables you to compare objectively the possible pathways and their trade offs. It prevents you locking into solutions mode too early and then doubling down on solving a low-yield problem that does not serve your goals as well as the alternatives. At the end of this process, you will have a better understanding of your priorities and how to achieve them.
Steps in the Meta-Problem Method
Dilemma
The high-level issue you are trying to address
Improve availability of needed medical providers.
Goal
The changes you want to make to address the dilemma. There are usually many options.
Supporting Goals
- Enough doctors to support patient needs.
- Effective triage to minimize healthcare burden.
Other goals could include maximizing provider job satisfaction, ensuring access in both urban and rural environments, and minimizing costs.
Problem Space
The set of problems you could chose to solve to advance your goals, plus the constraints that hold you back.
Example problems
- How can we create an adequate pipeline of doctors? Maybe the problem to solve is “How can we increase the number of people who choose to be doctors?”
- How can we minimize the healthcare burden on our system? Maybe the problem to solve is “How can we find the minimum provider care each patient needs?”
There are many other potential problems to solve related to having enough medical providers. Each goal has many possible problems we could link to it. Are there other problems linked to these first two goals? Which options come to mind for the other goals?
High-Yield Problems
Sometimes solving one problem helps make progress towards several goals. In this step, we identify these “two-for-the-price-of-one” problems.
Which options will advance more than one goal?
- Funding more residency training programs increases the number of doctors which will also reduce the burden and burnout on existing doctors, and can be designed to target rural hospitals. However, this will increase the cost of care and may continue to increase the number of doctors needed instead of directing patients to the lowest level of care they need.
- Developing better triage systems such as increasing awareness and accessibility and nurse-first triage will reduce the burden on the healthcare system, can reduce costs, and can meet needs in both urban and rural environments. However, this will not increase the number of medical staff, which may leave an unmet need even if the healthcare burden goes down.
There are many potential solutions that will have varying effects on the set of goals. Which alternatives improve the most important goals? How might the unknown change the right path forward? What other possible solutions are there to address the dilemma?
Problem Selection
Which of the many possible options in the high-yield problem step is the best set to address the dilemma?
- Which solutions make the most sense to reform health and healthcare?
- Which solutions will best address the dilemma?
- Which solutions will deliver the best outcome for the least amount of time, effort and money?
Implement, Learn and Adapt
Check continuously that you are still solving the best problem, as new information emerges.
Observe and learn as you go. As new information reveals itself, check continuously that you’re still solving the right problem.