HealthManagement, Volume 9, Issue 3 /2007

Germany
Hospitals Compare Therapeutic Results

The latest edition of the report on the quality of German hospitals reveals profound changes: the latest edition shows for the first time the data resulting from the guarantee of external quality for every hospital. In future, hospitals will present the quality of specific treatments in relation to other establishments and will deliver important information to patients and referring doctors.

 

Furthermore, the hospitals will use more than 200 quality indicators and will display their status in relation to the federal level. It will be obligatory to publish 27 quality indicators. The publication of supplementary indicators will be left to the discretion of the hospital.

 

With the appearance of reports, the patients can look on the internet sites of insurers or hospitals, and compare their local healthcare establishment to other hospitals in the country in the areas of:

• gall-bladder removal

• obstetrics

• pacemaker implantation

• hip or knee replacement (primary-implantation)

• coronary or thoracic surgery.

It is however necessary to carefully discuss this information with the referring doctor in order to put it in context.

 

Spain
Translation Services

The Andalusian health service has launched a new distance translation service to help foreign patients.

 

The Spanish health services have many enquiries from foreign patients: the town of Alicante, for example, just revealed that 17,345 foreigners were hospitalised in the province in 2006, mostly for surgical interventions. Apart from emergencies such as falls or appendicitis, most foreign patients, mainly British, German, Danish and Dutch, were operated on for the heart or hips.

 

The new method of translation consists of a telephone service where doctors and patients can talk in real time via a translator. The service is offered in English, French, Arab, German and Romanian, and is available every day of the year, 24 hours a day. This idea is the result of a shortage of translators, who often served as volunteers in the hospitals of the region.

 

France
New Minister of Health

Roselyne Bachelot was named Minister of Health by the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. She was already Minister for the Environment in the previous government.

 

Since taking her place, Madame Bachelot has announced that she wants to ‘push forward’ in the restructuring of certain activities, in particular surgery and obstetrics in public hospitals. She wants to regroup these practices in order to guarantee “excellence and quality”. The minister also defined an objective of 15,000 home medical care places to be attained by 2010 compared to 8,000 now.

 

UK
HealthExecTV

HealthExecTV is the on-line television channel for managers and professionals across the National Health Service.

 

The channel and its programmes are designed for all those responsible for the management and delivery of all aspects of healthcare services. HealthExecTV is produced by GBTV in association with the Institute of Healthcare Management and other leading representative bodies of healthcare professionals. These bodies provide editorial direction ensuring that the channel covers the issues and subject matter critical to IHM (Institute of Healthcare Management) members, managers and professionals across the health services community.

 

The channel assists health managers in keeping abreast of the rapidly changing health services environment and the increasing breadth of demands placed upon them as individuals.

 

For more information, refer to: www.healthexectv.tv

 

Ireland
HMI Responds to MRSA Challenge

The HMI (Health Management Institute of Ireland) fully accepts that the task of minimising the incidence of MRSA, in hospitals and other residential care settings, is a shared responsibility of all staff. It is true that staff who deal directly with sick patients can, by adopting safe practices, make a greater contribution than those who are less directly involved in patient care. Safe practice is more likely to occur where safe systems are in place and it is in relation to safe systems that managers can contribute most.

 

The report of the first National Hygiene Audit set out in paragraph 11.2 the role of managers in implementing and monitoring national policies, procedures and standards. In response to that report the institute commissioned an e-learning resource, entitled 'Challenging MRSA', which has been providing staff with an understanding of the MRSA 'superbug' and enabling them to follow the hygiene procedures required to minimise transmission of the infection.

 

Details of the e-learning resource are available at www.hmi.ie/elearningresources.htm.

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