Is there a single word that means “hitting the target but missing the point”?

For example the waiting time target in a hospital can be met if enough patients are killed off quickly so freeing up beds. However hitting the waiting time target in that way is rather missing the point of healthcare!

Solution 1:

I think one word which describes this kind of thinking is shortsighted:

lacking foresight or scope; a short view of the problem; "shortsighted policies"; "shortsighted critics derided the plan"; "myopic thinking"

In Calif. panel rejects new offshore oil drilling (2009), the situation is described in which the State Lands Commission rejected a proposal that could have led to the first new oil-drilling project off the California coast in 40 years.

...supporters...[said drilling] would benefit the region and help the cash-strapped state. Opponents, however, argued the plan was shortsighted. The vote came the day after the 40th anniversary of a massive oil spill off Santa Barbara that coated miles of beaches with oil and killed dolphins, seals and thousands of birds. The spill helped lead to the Clean Water Act and a moratorium on offshore drilling, galvanizing the modern environmental movement.

Unforesightful is a less elegant word for the same phenomenon.

Similarly, myopic, though technically a visual defect in which distant objects appear blurred, can be

lack of discernment or long-range perspective in thinking or planning

These are single words. A common idiom, though, is can't see the forest for the trees.

Solution 2:

A Pyrrhic victory (from the Pyrrhic War of Ancient Greece and Rome) is when you win the battle at such high cost that it would have been better to lose. The term used to be more popular during a more classics-oriented era, but I think it would be ideal to repurpose into a modern adjective.

Solution 3:

Not a single word but there is a phrase related:

the cure is worse than the disease

(figuratively) The solution or proposed solution to a problem produces a worse net result than the problem does (or threatens a non-negligible risk of doing so), especially via unintended consequences.

Unintended consequences can be roughly grouped into three types:

• A positive, unexpected benefit (usually referred to as luck, serendipity or a windfall).
• A negative, unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect of the policy

  (e.g., while irrigation schemes provide people with water for agriculture, they can increase waterborne diseases that have devastating health effects, such as schistosomiasis).

• A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended (when an intended solution makes a problem worse)

Also, this phrase is related to your example:

Throw out the baby with the bath water is an idiomatic expression and a concept used to suggest an avoidable error in which something good is eliminated when trying to get rid of something bad, or in other words, rejecting the essential along with the inessential.

A slightly different explanation suggests that this flexible catchphrase has to do with discarding the essential while retaining the superfluous because of excessive zeal. In other words, the idiom is applicable not only when throwing out the baby with the bath water, but also when someone might throw out the baby and keep the bath water.