HealthManagement, Volume 17 - Issue 3, 2017

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Despite that in general health spending is growing slowly, according to a recent OECD report European countries lag behind. Balancing the service demands against available resources is a key function of management. With increasing demand and reduction in resources it is meanwhile a real challenge for most of our European health colleagues to fill vacancies in order to maintain quality of care and patient safety with all these resource constraints. Today we are more than ever thriving to deliver a patient centred – quality focused care, which respect the dignity of the patient at the core of everything we do.

 

With our commitment to preserving and improving the quality of health for the patients we serve in our communities, we support treating patients at home, in the community or in appropriate hospitals.

 

The important point here is that people make up healthcare but often the personnel and patient position is overlooked, increasingly, at the ultimate expense to the sector.

 

With all these issues in mind we have to ask ourselves, how can the patients' voice be heard? How can healthcare organisations manage employees' wellbeing and prevent burnout and what approach is needed when restructuring? With human resources making up more than half of healthcare's costs, how best can we attract, recruit and retain staff and is working to the top of the license one answer to shortages?

 

In the ‘People’ Issue of HealthManagement.org we examine these questions while also putting new training methods, innovative mentoring and peer-to-peer appraisal in focus. This is fully in line with the main understanding of staff importance promoted by the European Association of Hospital Managers. You will find invitations to a few interesting workshops in this issue. Andrew Lovegrove of Skills for Health comments on workforce planning with the need for sustainability and affordable, deliverable quality outcomes in focus. Mark Lester at FutureLearn offers insights on what Massive Open Online Courses mean for healthcare professionals and organisations while the University of Twente shares its experience of implementing ultrasound education via this online platform.

 

Frank Roebroek of t he HR Trend Institute weighs in with views on how to manage an M&A, an issue that is of increasing concern in healthcare as more organisations merge.

 

Navami Leena and Adam Layland form the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at Coventry University examines whether traditional appraisal methods are suitable for healthcare personnel and HealthManagement.org rounds up some of the most innovative HR practices across all sectors that could inspire healthcare. As well as ‘People’ matters, there’s much more in this issue to inspire and give food for thought. Henk Veeze co-director of the 2017 Value Based Health Care Award-Winning Diabeter Clinic shares insights into how to build an ‘Olympic Team’ and succeed with the VBH C model and the issue of Lab Medicine harmonisation is covered as the European Union promotes a Common Training Framework. Finally, Jack Salmon lays it on the line with his comments on price control in pharma under the new U.S. administration.

 

As always, we hope you enjoy this issue of HealthManagement.org.