Evelyn Vargas was told in three separate settings that what she felt was anxiety. She did have anxiety. That was the clever part of it.
Return to work was staged over eleven weeks rather than signed off in one appointment, with the occupational health assessment done before the first shift rather than after the first problem.
Nothing in the programme is technologically remarkable. The difference is that somebody is looking at the output on a schedule, and knows who they are looking at.
Three appointments reaching the same wrong conclusion is a system problem, not a clinical one.
Illustrative composite
Cardiac rehabilitation is meant to be twelve weeks of supervised, graded exercise. For patients two hours from a centre, that has historically meant no rehabilitation at all.
“Nobody was careless,” she says. “Nobody’s job was to look at the whole shape of it. Now something’s is.”
