The president of a large managed health care facility also served on the board
of his community's symphony orchestra. Finding that he could not go to one of
the concerts, he gave his tickets to the company's director of health care cost
containment. The next morning, he asked the director how he enjoyed the
performance. Instead of the usual polite remarks, the director handed him a
memo which read as follows:

The undersigned submits the following comments and recommendations relative to
the performance of Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" by this city's symphony
orchestra as observed under actual working conditions:

A. The attendance of the conductor is unnecessary for the public performances.
The orchestra has obviously practiced and has the prior authorization from the
conductor to play the symphony at a predetermined level of quality.
Considerable money could be saved merely by having the conductor critique the
orchestra's performance during a retrospective peer review meeting.

B. For considerable periods, the four oboe players had nothing to do. Their
numbers should be reduced and their work spread over the whole orchestra, thus
eliminating peaks and valleys of activity.

C. All 12 violins were playing identical notes with identical motions. This is
unnecessary duplication: the staff of this section should be cut drastically
with consequent savings.If a large volume of sound is required, this could be
obtained through electronic amplification, which has reached high levels of
reproductive quality.

D. Much effort was expanded playing 16th notes or semi-quavers. This seems an
excessive refinement, as most listeners are unable to distinguish such rapid
playing. It is recomended that all notes be rounded up to eighth. If this is
done, it would also be possible to use trainees and lower grade musicians with
no loss of quality.

E. No useful purpose would be appear to be served by repeating with horns the
same passage that has already been handled by the strings. If all such
redundant passages were eliminated, as a determined by the utilization review
committee, the concert would have been reduced from two hours to about 20
minutes,  resulting in substantial savings in salaries and overhead. In fact,
if Schubert had addressed these concerns on a cost containment basis, he
probably would have been able to finish this symphony!