Complexity Theory v Fact

     Intellectual surrender in the face of increasing complexity seems too extreme and even a bit cowardly, but what should we replace it with if we can't understand our creations anymore?                                       Samuel Arbesman, complexity scientist

      Created in a former Fort Lauderdale apartment building with funds donated by local residents, Broward General Hospital boasted less than 50 beds when it admitted its first patient in 1938.
       It was still hard times in the dregs of the Depression.
       But  most local folks - black and white -- knew right where they belonged, or didn't, in a time when everybody knew everybody.
       However, even dying black folk understood they weren't welcome at Broward General with its all-white staff of doctors and nurses.
       The hospital was still small  and segregated when - by act of the equally segregated Florida legislature - the North Broward Hospital District was created to levy property taxes needed to build a new wing  on the local hospital.
       Like most of Florida's special taxing districts, the hospital district would be governed by local citizens -- in this, seven appointed by the Florida governor.
       By the Fifties, north Broward's population had grown to more than a 100,000 residents -- thanks to the steady stream of Veterans buying homes with government loans close by where they'd been stationed in W-W-Two.  
       Even so, back then and well into the future, Broward General was where white folks had babies or went hoping for a cure.
       But as for open heart surgery or liver transplants...?
       Or today's $3.9 billion District budget...?
       Or how yesterday's 45-bed hospital has mushroomed into one of the ten largest health care systems in the nation....?
        Or that today's $700 million District payroll supports nearly 8,000 FTEs...?
        Or the army of lawyers and purchasing agents required to negotiate and oversee the thousands of contracts needed to provide the system with everything from artificial hearts to Big Macs.    
         Or how and why the mega system's most recent CEO chose to kill himself a few months back...
          Or whatever... 
         Point is, having morphed into a giant, institutionalized  jungle of bureaucracy, Broward Health is still governed by  a politically appointed, seven-member board of Commissioners - each one just as ignorant of hospital operations as their politically appointed predecessor a lifetime ago. 
        Which is so insanely complex as to boggle!
        And why, as any terminally dysfunctional system overtaken by time and complexity, Broward Health doesn't "work" - except as a greed-driven hotbed of political patronage.

Broward General - 1940's