Leadership and Management in Cardiovascular Medicine

During the last fifty years, cardiovascular medicine has remarkably advanced by continuously contributing both in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases and their diagnostic and therapeutic management.

Given the increase in the quality of life and survival rate of cardiovascular patients, it has been recognised that to a significant degree, the expectations of financial investments reflecting tax payers and healthcare managers have been met.

However, recent developments, such as the ageing population, the growing demand of patients to optimise their quality of care, but mostly the increasing cost of new medical technologies, have ranked the provision of professional services as a top priority. Likewise, the relation between cost-effectiveness as the main doctrine of healthcare systems, which requests from outstanding specialists – mostly health economists – to produce tailored financial models for the burden of cost and effectiveness in cardiovascular diseases, but also make use of digital technologies, may leave minor space for non-transparency, amateurism and any form of mismanagement.

In view of these rapid developments, physicians and several specialists in cardiovascular medicine encounter lack of knowledge and skills, while they are being directly exposed to the invasive censorship of professional healthcare managers. Even more, they tend to become victims of their Hippocratic perception when they tackle health policy challenges which are mostly driven by the tactics of minimum cost. Nonetheless, medicine and healthcare is not just any business.

Facing this reality, leading physicians, nowadays, need to deepen their knowledge, understanding and capabilities, far beyond those of any gifted amateur. The complexity of healthcare requires a sophisticated knowledge which associates medicine with professional administration, notions of health economics and global understanding against modern developments, more generally, but also, specifically, in the significant area of digital health.

The European Society of Cardiology and its bureau in Brussels, the European Heart Agency, has clearly indicated during the past three years, the urgent need to engage in key evolving areas such as health economics, quality of care and clinical outcomes, as well as professionalism of leadership.

This Leadership and Management in Cardiovascular Medicine conference in Vienna on June 16-18, brought together a multidisciplinary faculty of senior cardiologists, health economists, academics in the area of leadership and administration, as well as senior executives from industry. It consisted of a three-day forum aimed at deploying topics in cardiovascular medicine, in a way that they can be tackled based on experience and knowledge.

The utility and added value of this forum for leading physicians, but also for junior executives who aspire to pursue an outstanding career in leading cardiovascular departments, clinics and hospitals, is clear and prominent.

During the course of this forum, all participants had the opportunity to follow talented keynote senior speakers who ran an in-depth analysis of a series of topics related to these new evolving realities in the area of health economics, talent management, ethics and regulations, but also medical technologies. The latter include 3D organ printing, big data and predictive analytics in medicine. In addition, all participants were entitled to participate in interesting workshops where senior speakers triggered and promoted interaction and direct tailored discussions.

I sincerely trust that this forum calls upon a well promising area which so far was not part of any traditional clinical seminar or congresses attended by physicians. As a result, its success will enable our society to host in the future similar recurrent events so as physicians and cardiovascular specialists will not lose momentum and will remain up to date, in view of all these fast evolving realities which play a crucial role in their profession.

I wish well that our expectations to deliver an innovative and exceptional forum will have been met and the number of participants will ensure the upcoming need to be adequately educated and enlightened in cutting-edge topics far from their traditional routine duties

Key Points

• Ageing population, quality of care, cost of new technologies require professional services.
  
• Physicians and specialists face invasive censorship from professional healthcare managers.
  
• New evolving realities include health economics, talent management, ethics and regulations.