Editorial

As with our European neighbours, the French health system has been facing serious challenges for several years. Naturally, these have taken a variety of forms, but they all have the same origins: the increasing scarcity of medical human resources, a very high increase in health expenditure coupled with large budgetary cons traints, and the difficulty of reconciling the necessary proximity of health establi...

News

Danish Delegation Visits Brussels Last year, our Danish sister organisation, the Dansk Selskab For Ledelse I Sundhedsvæsenet, decided to create an international sub committee. The aim was to promote the exchange of know ledge and experiences with the international communit... Read more...

Population Growth – A ChallengeLatest News from the Association of Hospital Managers of Vienna Population growth and the consequent challenges for the healthcare sector was the aptly chosen theme of the Seventh Training Conference for Hospital Managers held in Vienna in November 2008. The proportion of the population aged 65 years and over is increasing worldwide. Accounting for only 5% of the po...

Green Paper on the European Workforce for Health Last December, the European Commission adopted a green paper on the EU workforce for health. This marks the beginning of a consultation period which aims to identify common responses to the many challenges facing the health workforce in Europe. A high quality health workforce is crucial for successful health systems. The health workforce plays an important...

Czech EU PresidencyThe biggest challenge facing the Czech government during its European presidency over the next six months will be to secure agreement on new legislation to update existing European working time rules. Prague, with the help of the European Commission, has just three months to end the stand off between national governments and the European Parliament which emerged shortly before Christmas o...

E-Health

High Potential Opportunity and Managerial Challenge The increase in demand for health services tends more and more often to outstrip the increase in supply. Ageing populations, increasing incidence of chronic diseases, and improvements in medical knowledge and technological equipment are the main demand drivers across the EU. The financial and real resources available for meeting this increase in demand...

E-health refers to the application of information and communication technologies to the healthcare sector. From the management of the electronic patient or staff data, to the use of telesurveillance, telesurgery, teleexpertise, teleconsultations, to long distance learning by personnel members, e-health manifests itself through a wide range of products and services within the hospital context. But what abou...

Forumclinic is a set of audiovisual material (DVDs and Website) in both Spanish and Catalan launched in January 2007. Its purpose: improving the quality of life of chronically ill patients. Based on the premise that by having a better understanding of their disease patients can become more autonomous, the project aims to encourage patient involvement in the clinical decision making process hand in hand wit...

Since the publication in 1999 of arguably the most important call to action for patient safety, the Institute of Medicine’s report ‘To Err is Human’, we have learnt a lot about how to reduce risk in healthcare and how to improve patient safety. Technology clearly has an important role to play but we know that it can also bring increased risks which every hospital board member should be aware of....

Human Resources:Staff Retention

In many European countries, health service managers are facing increasing problems of staff attraction and retention. Especially in the nursing health workforce, turnover rates are high, vacancies remain open and the resulting staff deficits lead to increased workload, burnout and reduce staff commitment. During the last decade, several European countries took policy measures to increase the inflow i...

For many reasons, it often makes greater sense to have certain hospital functions performed externally rather than leaving these tasks to the hospital itself. Such reasons include greater flexibility, the ability to draw upon professional know-how, the effects of synergies or cooperations, or the adoption of different compensation systems. Furthermore, departments requiring expensive machinery, such as lab...

The Gustav Roussy Institute, the first European centre of cancerology, is situated in the south of Paris, in the Villejuif district. Its four hundred beds are divided between different sectors of medicine: paediatrics, general and cervico facial surgery. The “Tarn” unit, affected by the time table change, is situated in general surgery. This sector of twenty-six beds caters for the “difficult” pati...

Those responsible for running a department repeatedly come up against the limits of practicability on many levels. Fixed-term projects can often be very helpful here - they allow people to familiarise themselves with a new situation and examine to what extent things have improved (or not). In this sense not only should strengths be reinforced, but above all, weaknesses should be given all the support they...

Medtech

The selection and integration of appropriate information systems is one of the challenges facing hospital managers in their quest to achieve organisations offering a high level of clinical care, coupled with efficiency, and good financial and clinical governance. The issues become particularly difficult when ‘top down’ systems, such as EHR, HIS and PACS come into contention with established departmenta...

Country Focus: Lithuania

Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is one of the three Baltic States. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian enclave of the Kaliningrad Oblast to the southwest. Lithuania is a member of NATO. Its population is 3.4 million, declining during the last decade because of demographic fact...

Since restoration of Lithuania’s independence in 1990, the most significant changes in the country’s health system have taken place in the area of inpatient treatment. Lithuania inherited an expensive model from the Soviet Semashko system; a system in need of refocusing on the market model by a gradual reduction of inpatient beds and hospital network. This process was carried out in several stages....

Founded in 1991, the Association of Hospital Managers Physicians of Lithuania grew significantly during its first decade of existence: its membership extended not only to the managers of healthcare facilities, but also to other people working in the field of healthcare establishments. In 2004 the Association evolved: it updated its charter, structured itself as an association as far as legal entities, and...

French

Le System De Sante Francais En Pleine Mutation A l’instar de ses voisins européens, le système de santé français est confronté depuis plusieurs années à des problématiques lourdes. Celles-ci se manifestent certes selon des forms différentes, mais ont toutes les mêmes origin... Read more...

Une Dèlègation Danoise En Visite à Bruxelles L’année dernière, notre organisationsoeur, la Dansk Selskab For Ledelse I Sundhedsvæsenet a décidé de créer un sous-comité international. L’objectif était de promouvoir l’échange de connaissances et d’expériences avec la c... Read more...

Investissement en e-Santé Par Alexander Dobrev, Tom Jones et Karl A. Stroetmann L’étude récente, intitulée Financing eHealth, fournit une guidance générale aux investisseurs potentiels en e-santé afin de les soutenir dans leur processus décisionnel. La leçon principale en ce qui concerne les modèles à adopter est d’inté grer les décisions d’investissement en e-santé à la stratég...

German

Der Wandel IM Gesundheitssystem in Frankreich Das Gesundheitswesen in Frankreich ist, wie bei den europäischen Nachbarn, seit mehreren Jahren mit erheblichen Probleme konfrontiert. Diese äußern sich zwar in verschiedenen Formen, haben aber alle dieselben Ursprünge: Verknappung medi... Read more...

Danische Delegation Besucht Brussel Vergangenes Jahr beschloss unsere dänische Schwester-Organisation, das dänische ,,Selskab For Ledelse I Sundhedsvæsenet“, ein internationales Sub- Komitee zu gründen. Das Ziel ist ein Erfahrungs- und Wissensaustausch mit der internationalen Gemeinschaft, das Verfolgen von internationalen Entwicklungen im Managementbereich des Gesundheitswesens und das Einbringen...

Ehealth Investment Von Alexander Dobrev, Tom Jones und Karl A. Stroetmann Die kürzlich fertiggestellte eHealth-Finanzierungsstudie stellt einen allgemeinen Leitfaden für künftige Investoren im eHealth-Bereich dar und liefert eine Unterstützung bei Entscheidungen über Finanzierungen. Der wichtigste Punkt der angebotenen Modelle ist die Integrierung der Investitionsentscheidungen im eHealth- Berei...


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