Editorial
Solidarity in Face of Adversity
Europe challenges all of us. It is not easy to remain on the right path for a common Europe against the current background of unstable economies and the financial crisis. It is now all the more important that all of us answer for a common Europe and create the prerequisites for positive development. If this happens under the stipulation of solidarity and subsidiarity in all areas of life, I am confident th...
National News
Living for the Age: Excellence in Austerity
The Institute of Healthcare Management Northern Ireland Division held their annual conference in November 2011. The theme of the conference was “Living for the Age: Excellence in Austerity”. Explaining the concept, Stephen Hodkinson, IHM Chair NI Division believes “Managers have a responsibility to help shape policy and its modes of delivery. Their behaviours and attitudes are inevitably affected b...
Dutch Report on E-Health and Self-Management: More Care for Less Money
The report, “E-health and self-management: a panacea for labour shortages and cost overruns in healthcare?” was first presented on 8 February in The Hague at the 12th Symposium "No self-care without e-care". Populations are ageing and an acute labour shortage in healthcare is imminent. The Ministry of Health, health insurers and healthcare professionals are faced with less staff and fewer resources t...
News
EAHM and the Cross-Border Directive
The new European Directive on patient rights in cross-border healthcare was adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union on 9 March 2011. It establishes, on a European legislative level, the general rule that patients have the right to receive healthcare in a EU Member State other than their own. Patients may be reimbursed up to the level of costs that reflect the level of suppo...
EU Affairs
New Push for Organ Donations
Hospitals throughout Europe should establish donor coordinators to help increase the supply of healthy organs from the recently deceased to patients requiring a transplant. Their role would be to identify potential donors and optimise the entire process of organ donation. The general concept was first raised by the European Commission and endorsed by the European Parliament in 2010. It was addressed more...
Cover Story
Outsourcing in Healthcare Systems
In the supply chain management of healthcare organisations, outsourcing decisions have specific distinctiveness, namely, in the reasons and constraints of the decision, in the selection criteria of the activities left to third-party operators, in the type of possible agreements, and even in the impact of the outsourcing decision on the organisation. After the success of outsourcing within the manufacturing...
Outsourcing and Information Technology
With decreasing healthcare reimbursement and increasing economic uncertainty, there is a growing trend for hospitals to opt for a zero capital expen- diture, managed service model with the purchase of IT systems in healthcare. As the application of managed service models emerges in the PACS market, it paves the way for cloud technology to finally have a significant impact in medical imaging. Managed serv...
Successful Negotiation of Outsourcing Agreements
Speaking at HIMSS 2012 in Las Vegas, Diana J.P. McKenzie Partner and Chair of an IT and outsourcing practice group identified key negotiation points in billing and collections outsourcing agreements (RCM, Revenue Cycle Management Contracts), highlighted ideas for benchmarking vendor performance and strategies for risk and reward. McKenzie believes RCM contracts are currently popular due to our slowing ec...
Social Media
The Next Step for Patient-Centred Care?
Today we can’t imagine working without emails and online resources; the Internet has become an integral part of our everyday lives. In the future, I believe all organisations, including healthcare institutions, will feel the same way about social media. Through this article I want to introduce you to the most common forms of social media and illustrate how they can be used within the healthcare sector. I...
Most Common Forms of Social Media
Twitter In their own words “Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news about what you find interesting. Simply find the accounts you find most compelling and follow the conversations.” People communicate on Twitter by writing Tweets: 140 character long posts. Twitter is the place where conversations start, where people comment on current...
Denise Silber, founder of Doctors 2.0 & You
I asked Denise Silber, founder of the Doctors 2.0 & You conference, for her comments on the use of social media in hospitals and the reluctance of many executives to get involved. Thinking of Going Ahead with Social Media but Afraid of Loss of Control? Well, in fact, when you have one-way communication, you have a false sense of security. You don't know what people think...Yes, of course, a few vocif...
Lab and Diagnostics Special
(E)Hospital Lab and Diagnostics Supplement
Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) are an increasingly important part of modern laboratory infrastructure. As typically very sophisticated software products, LIMS often require considerable resources to select, deploy and maintain. Larger organisations may have access to specialist IT support to assist with requirements elicitation and software customisation, however smaller groups will often...
Active Surveillance Testing (AST) for MRSA Carriage
The issue of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) is one that commands increasing public, professional and governmental attention worldwide. The success of interventions to control avoidable HAIs, including infections associated with meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), is evidenced by recent data from the European Antibiotic Resistance Surveillance System (EARSS) which reported 30 percent...
Usefulness of Biomarkers in the Clinical Decision Making Process in Sepsis
Why are Clinicians using Biomarkers more Frequently? The criteria to define the presence of sepsis (Levy et al. 2003) as well as to evaluate its clinical severity are not satisfactory since the signs and symptoms of sepsis are poorly specific and highly sensitive. Even more difficult than the diagnosis, is the monitoring of infection response to antibiotics (Povoa 2008). Currently the assessment of respons...
Matrix
Technology Lets the Light Shine in:
When MaineGeneral Health opens its New Regional Hospital in 2014, here’s what people will notice: Sunlight, big windows, private rooms, lounges, a courtyard and a healing garden. Here’s what they may not notice: Cuttingedge information technology running through every inch of the building. And MaineGeneral is OK with that. The New Regional Hospital in Augusta, Maine, incorporates state-of-the-art tec...
Healthy Hospital Personnel
A hospital and its services, from nursing staff and doctors to management, is a business in which the daily concern of many employees is the health of their patients. Einsiedeln hospital recognises the equal importance of the welfare of its staff and has implemented a peer project as part of its quality management system. This type of project is unique in Switzerland. People in charge at all levels in a...
Interview: Manfred Klocke, CEO of the Ecclesia Group
Firstly, Tell Us a Bit About Ecclesia. What does the Company do and What are its Main Objectives? The Ecclesia Group as international insurance broker is representative of its clients' interests vis-à-vis the insurance industry. The company, which is independent of banks and insurers, belongs with its 1,300 employees to the major players in Europe, and, in its traditional business segment hospitals / heal...
Medtech
The Ethics of Online Healthcare
For many people, e-health services and telemedicine provide convenient and flexible ways to manage their healthcare. However, a major enquiry by the UK-based independent Nuffield Council on Bioethics has identified a number of ethical questions and challenges associated with various forms of online healthcare. The Council’s report, Medical profiling and online medicine: the ethics of personalised healthc...
Interview
The Austrian Healthcare System
Austria is a democratic republic situated in central Europe, which covers a territory about 84,000 square kilometres. It has nine provinces including Vienna as its capital. About 8.5 million inhabitants live there and demographic forecasts predict that the population will grow to more than nine million by 2030. Since 1955 Austria has been a member of the United Nations and since 1995 a member of the Europe...