Balancing Economics and Medicine for improved outcomes
Economic pressure often is regarded as detrimental to health care quality because the care providers may, in one way or the other, be influenced by the financials. Inappropriate indications, too early or too many procedures, as well as too early discharge from hospitals, could lead to fatal consequences for the patients.
On the other hand, there is evidence that lean management and straightforward process optimization result in better medical results and subsequently improved economic outcomes.
Content and goal of the Course
The form of the financial burden varies from country to country and from hospital to hospital and certainly correlates with the hospitals` ownership. In emerging economies, e.g., there is a growing trend toward privatization. In markets like India, almost 70% of all the care provided is in the private sector. Typically, such hospitals tend to be more fee for service-oriented. In extreme scenarios, it is quite possible that financial outcomes may sometimes outweigh clinical outcomes.
Additionally, governments continue to implement healthcare transformation reforms that drive costs down. Of course, there is a vital need for economically reasonable business behavior. Hospitals will not be able to provide healthcare services anymore when they are insolvent. But either way, the balance between medicine and finance should always be straightforward.
Risk management in hospitals has been generally limited to topics around patient safety, medication errors, and the like. But the entrepreneurial view on risk management for the organization hospital hasn’t received widespread attention in healthcare professionals.
This course grants a basic yet pragmatic understanding of clinically relevant controlling principles and entrepreneurial risk management. We search for the key performance indicators for balanced overall hospital performance and suitable assessment of parameters pertinent to the daily routine.
Discussion
Understanding the need for healthy economics in your hospital. How do you measure efforts and results today?
- Introduction: Balancing finance and medicine. The need for healthy economics
- What do you count today and why? Understanding your medical and financial controlling.
- Considerations and impact of economics to your clinical work.
- How do you encounter economic risks?
Knowledge
Mastering the numbers: Introduction to the relevant accounting principles and tools for medical and financial controlling.
- Tools for cost-performance analysis, learn to interpret the numbers, and deduce measurements for optimal balancing between medicine and economics
- Business intelligence in hospitals: How to use a Balanced Score Card and other tools
- Data-based decision making. What numbers are relevant in clinic management? How do we obtain the required intelligence and what do we do with it?
- Enterprise risk management and the required data
Showcase
Numbers in action: Understanding the impact of balance sheets on healthcare performance.
- Sustainable financial performance. Factors and variables to be considered.
- Lessons learned from the G-DRG System and its impact on healthcare quality. Advantages and drawbacks.
- Influence of economic restraints on medical processes, culture, and outcomes.
Workshop
Develop your personal finance and controlling toolbox. Setting up a pragmatic and applicable risk management system for your clinic.
- Configuration of your personal controlling toolbox.
- Writing an individual template for return on investment of clinical projects/ investments for negotiations and as a basis for a business concept/ plan.
- Quality assurance is not quality management (QM). Development of an individual and relevant quality assurance system for your department/ hospital.
- Development of a relevant risk management system for your department/ hospital incl. evaluation criteria, feasible timetable, and communication plan.
The modules of the course
03a - Hospital economics
In evolving and turbulently uncertain conditions as in the healthcare sector, it is imperative to understand the basics of medical and financial control measures.
This module will adequately equip medical professionals to have a meaningful and logical dialogue with their CFOs and board members on financial matters. Participants will appreciate the balance and tensions that exist between finance and medicine.
Even more, we will develop ways to use economic pressure to enable and catalyze better medicine.
03b - Enterprise risk management for hospitals
The causes of poor medical outcomes are not exclusively attributed to care providers like physicians or nurses. Instead, the surrounding internal and external microsystems of a hospital are also responsible.
Hence, in this module, a compelling argument on the need for a comprehensive enterprise-wide risk management system that secures the interests of patients, doctors, staff, investors, and society at large will be presented.
We advocate a holistic responsibility framework with roles for every stakeholder of the hospital.