“HealthCare Is Different…”​… Except That It Really Isn’t

Every day, UPS has to predict where millions of packages are going to originate on future days and where they are going to go. Many of these are going to be overnight deliveries from far-flung cities and need to be delivered to specific addresses before 10:30am the next morning. Why does UPS need to predict this information far into the future? Because that’s how the company can optimize how to use its fleet of aircraft and trucks to deliver on time, on budget, meet its promise to customers, and make a profit. This is very hard to do and yet, I can’t remember the last time UPS or Fedex failed to deliver on their promise to me in the midst of sun, rain, snow, or storms all over the country and the world.

Pre-COVID (and even as we work through the impact of COVID), every airline has to predict how many passengers will fly from any one of the nearly 20,000 airports in the country to any of the others. That’s 400 Million options with almost no certainty of which one of 330 Million Americans is going to decide to get up one day and decide to go from Airport A to Airport B possibly through Airport C on some future date. At an affordable cost and of course with a huge emphasis on safety. Why do airlines have to do this? Because that’s how they can price each seat on each flight, staff each flight based on the type of aircraft, schedule aircraft, and…