European Union

All information is gathered on the page “EU solidarity with Ukraine“.

The European Commission created an information page for people fleeing the war in Ukraine with information on rights, travel options, national authorities to contact for temporary protection and which organisations are active in helping those fleeing Ukraine, as well as how to contact them.

Another page includes a section “How you can help” with a repertoire of the numerous organisations that have mobilised in the EU Member States to support people from Ukraine seeking protection in the EU. These include the national branches of international agencies, umbrella organisations and a range of other charitable and humanitarian bodies. It also lists the major relief organisations active on the ground that are coordinating assistance to Ukraine.

The page “EU Assistance to Ukraine” explains what the EU is doing at different level (humanitarian help, civil protection mechanism, emergency logistical hubs, temporary protection mechanism etc.)

WHO/Europe

In March 2022, WHO/Europe released information on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Humanitarian response in Ukraine and neighboring countries.

On 2 March, WHO/Europe also published the WHO Emergency appeal for Ukraine and neighbouring countries, an appeal detailing its resource needs for Ukraine and its surrounding countries for the next three months. With the funds sought, WHO aims to reach, in the next three months, 6 million people with essential health services including trauma care.

Furthermore part of the health response to the Ukraine’s emergency, the WHO Regional Office for Europe is publishing related content on its website WHO/Europe | Ukraine emergency with updates including weekly Situation Reports at Situation reports.

WHO/Europe is also producing Risk Communication and Community Engagement products based on social listening insights to provide public health advice to affected populations in and outside Ukraine. The products will be released on a weekly basis in different formats including social medial tiles, leaflets, posters and video clips. The target audiences vary from affected people and internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees, communities in refugee-receiving countries, health workers, aid organisations and volunteers. Weekly topics are identified according to listening insights and needs on the ground.  

Please find below the Risk Communication and Community Engagement products published recently.

Links to social media tiles published on WHO channels:   

– Reporting misconduct: FB: English – Ukrainian Twitter: Ukrainian   

– Severe stress management: FB: English 1 – English 2 – Ukrainian 1 –  Ukrainian 2  Twitter:  Ukrainian   

– Breastfeeding: FB: Ukrainian 1– Ukrainian 2 Twitter: English – Ukrainian  

– Attacks on health: Twitter: English – Ukrainian

– Reporting misconduct: Facebook English – Ukrainian

The post Ukraine – useful resources appeared first on Hope.

Collaboration, knowledge sharing and networking were high on the agenda on the recent HOPE Study Tour: Finland, which took place in Helsinki on 24-25 September 2019, and focused on the latest developments in digital healthcare. The visit was organised by the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities which represents the interests of all 311 Finnish municipalities responsible for health and social care in municipalities and hospital districts across the country. The practical organisation of the tour was led by the HOPE National Co-ordinator, Ms Hannele Häkkinen, and as our guide she was efficient and welcoming from start to finish. The 19 participants were accommodated in the Hotel Katajanokka, an atmospheric, multi-award-winning boutique hotel in the centre of the city which, until 2002, was still a local prison. All transport to and from the various venues for the study tour were organised in advance, and the group was also treated to a superb networking dinner at Ravintola Kuu on the first night, featuring local Finnish cuisine and enjoyed immensely by all who attended.

The study tour participants came from a range of European countries including Cyprus, Latvia, Denmark, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Serbia, Germany, Luxembourg and Finland. The programme started with an overview of the structure and organisation of the Finnish health and social care system. It was noted that the Finnish Government is currently considering some major social and healthcare reorganisation for the future. The proposal is to reduce from 311 municipalities, to 18 self-governing regions (“counties”) which are larger than the municipalities, and which will take on the responsibility for organising social and healthcare services, and emergency and rescue services. In addition, 5 collaborative health areas will be created for specialised care. These areas will be centred on the current catchment areas of the 5 major university teaching hospitals in Helsinki, Tampere, Oulu, Turku and Kuopio. The Study Tour focused on Helsinki as the largest region within Finland, with 23 hospitals, almost a third of the population and still growing.

As Finland is currently holding the 6-month Presidency of the European Council the participants heard a very interesting presentation on the economics of wellbeing in the organisation of services. Finland’s objective during their Presidency of the EU Council is to stimulate an open European debate on the economics of wellbeing, and to improve policy-level understanding of the fact that universal wellbeing is a prerequisite for economic growth and for social and economic stability.

The participants also experienced site visits to Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) to learn about “Health Village” – a unique digital service platform and eHealth development programme – and the new Helsinki Children’s Hospital, which took 6 years to plan and opened 12 months ago showcasing various digital developments to support a world-class experience for young patients and their families.

So why choose Finland to visit to learn about digital health? The study tour group soon discovered that Finland is at the forefront of digital healthcare development within Europe; offering universal high-quality health services for a relatively small but demanding population, with some specialist needs in respect of certain genetic illnesses. The Finnish health and social care system is accessed in a number of ways – the public health services provided by the municipalities; occupational health schemes which cover most of the working population (87%), private health services, and a range of NGOs which complement the more formal system.

Finland has been working on developing its national health database since the 1980s, and every patient has an electronic patient record. With a relatively small and isolated population Finland is ideally placed to trial new developments in data analytics, and is investing 4% of its GDP in digital development. In addition, the country aims to be at the forefront of understanding genetic illnesses, and is on the way to ensuring 10% of the population are genotyped. The Finns are highly motivated to engage with digital solutions and “Health Village”, which started to take shape in 2014, is a national virtual hospital project with interfaces for the public, patients and health professionals.

The “Health Village” project is a national project but is based in Helsinki at HUS (Helsinki University Hospital) which is the second largest employer in Finland with almost 25,000 staff.  The national healthcare database provides a huge “data lake” which feeds the various developments offered by the eHealth development programme. The system is accessible to all Finns, regardless of their place of residence or income, and is a practical tool to guide them in both everyday life and self-care, and also when they are in contact with professional health services. The digital platform is supported by almost 2000 healthcare professionals who lead the development of disease pathway management; evidence-based cost control; patient and health professional education and predictive medicine.

Every patient has a “My Path” customer account, and he or she is enabled to navigate their own way through the system. There are at present 32 disease-based information hubs, which have been designed by health professionals, and more are being added all the time. The emphasis for the patient facing part of the platform is on non-technical language with advice for patients on how to present to health services to get the best results for their symptoms. Patients can access the information anonymously without being tracked, and each pathway is a medical device (CE marked and designed by clinicians). The experience so far is that contacts to health professionals have reduced as patients have much more information about their own personal condition.  Where medical or nursing advice is shared with the patient, this advice is recorded on the patient’s individual electronic patient record.

What was most impressive was the way the digital platform allowed for the development of predictive medicine; both in terms of the way diseases will develop for individuals, and in terms of the individual’s likelihood to engage with the treatment plan. The system highlights those patients who will need extra professional health to stay on track. Health Village therefore complements traditional treatment pathways by supporting operational change tailored to the individual rather than just digitalising old services.

There is much the Study Tour participants can learn from the way Health Village has been developed. The core principles involve the continual engagement of patients and the public; the development of clinical content by clinicians; the scalability of services (once designed) to increase patient education and self-care and reduce face to face clinical contacts; and the use of highly developed data analytics to learn from the experience of the whole national database to focus interventions on the needs of the individual. The opportunities for medical education and research are enormous, and at present the HUS Informatics teams are working on how to automatically integrate patient contacts with the system into the individual electronic patient record to provide comprehensive data on every individual patient.

The security for this national service is via strong ID (similar to the systems used by the banking sector) and at all times the citizen can choose how much of their individual data from the national data lake is shared and with whom. It seems that the biggest challenge will be keeping the medical pathways up to date and there is already a maintenance schedule for the pathways – the same as for medical devices. HUS is currently looking for international partners to globalise the ideas developed within Health Village; their vision is for an international data platform to inform the future of medicine.

The visit to the New Children`s Hospital in Helsinki was much anticipated by the Study Tour participants as a number of countries are planning new Paediatric or Women & Children’s hospitals in the next 5 years. The Helsinki Children’s Hospital opened in September 2018 and is the leading provider of specialised health care for paediatric patients in Finland. Funded by both donations and taxes, the New Children’s Hospital was awarded the Finlandia Prize for Architecture in 2018 for its state-of-the-art technology blended with the human touch. The Hospital has 140 beds and employs 800 nurses, 300 medical doctors and 200 other specialist staff members.

On arrival in the main entrance, with its impressive interactive digital fish tank, it is plain to see that the experience of children and their families has been integral to the design and development of New Children`s Hospital. Family advisory councils shared their views on digital services, artwork and the facilities in patient rooms, and on the intensive care unit. An adolescent panel also gave their opinion on the development of the services to be provided, and the delivery of treatments and examinations.  The use of the most modern digital technology was evident throughout the hospital to improve the patient experience, and to put children and adolescents at ease when receiving services.

On arrival children are asked to check into a kiosk to record their attendance and to track their location within the hospital. The child is asked to choose from one of over 200 avatars, and this is then personalised to their care record for that visit to allow them to be identified and called for in public areas without any breach of patient confidentiality; all whilst maintaining a fun talking point for the child with their carers and health professionals.

The healing power of art and play has a significant role in recovery, and the hospital has special permission from the family of the late Tove Jansson to use the illustrations and quotes from the Moomin stories on every one of the 8 levels. The interactive digital marine aquarium in the main atrium allows children to write messages on a piece of paper and post them in a box. The messages can then be scanned in and will appear on the sides of the fish swimming in the tank, much to the delight of the child.

Digital solutions are now integral to modern medical care and the hospital works closely with Health Village to allow Artificial intelligence (AI) to speed up the prediction and treatment of serious infections in preterm babies in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Physically disabled patients in need of demanding surgery can be examined in the gait analysis laboratory, and the information gathered leads to improved outcomes. New methods for examining a patient’s movements are currently being developed so that analysis can be carried out at home; and Video-EEG is used in variety of ways when planning surgery for epilepsy. New methods of cellular therapy enhance the treatment of malignant diseases, and improve the prognoses of patients, and all this work is supported by the impressive big scale data analysis possible from the national database.

The HOPE Study Tour in Helsinki was excellent value for money. A huge amount of information on relevant developments in modern healthcare was shared within a very short space of time, and there was ample opportunity to meet and network with health management peers across Europe. The Finns should be proud of the advances they have made already in digital healthcare, and applauded for their willingness to share their knowledge with colleagues in others countries.

This newsletter article was written as a collaborative piece by Roberta Fuller & Debra Shields from the Royal Cornwall Hospital in the UK, and Doris Voit from the German Hospital Federation. 

Contact: Ms Hannele Häkkinen, Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, [email protected]

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This may be the most important statement from the HOPE Study Tour that Danish Regions organized in spring 2018. The participants heard of working methods and projects that help define and address the challenges at hand, and discussions on this took place in an open forum meant to advance the exchange of best practices, ideas and challenges, which is the heart of the HOPE Study Tours.

But back to the first statement: “What outcome do we want?” Not just in Denmark, but all over Europe. A patient centered health care system, but also an affordable health care system, a dedicated and highly qualified staff, short waiting lists, high quality, specialized services, personalized medicine, etc.? Is all of it possible or how do we rank which is the most important, and what effect does it have on how we ought to work? The Study Tour gave an insight into how the Danish health care sector works with a lot of issues.

What has Denmark done to address the quality challenge?

In 2016 a new national Quality programme was established, with the aim to build a nationwide improvement work on the results and experience of the patients. The programme abolished accreditation at hospitals, as we had come as far as we could with that instrument, it has fewer process and registration demands, and more systematic improvement work, where management and staff can follow, analyze and act based on key numbers.

8 national goals agreed by the national, regional and local political level were introduced. These goals are the cornerstone of the national quality programme. A range of indicators are meant to make the goals concrete. It is up to each level to make sure that the exact challenges they are facing are addressed to reach the goals. Learning and quality teams established with both regional and local participants are meant to follow the developments and to follow up on the results. So far it seems like the new approach to quality has given new life and enthusiasm to an area, that was regarded by many health professionals as bureaucratic and not always clinically worthwhile.

The five Danish regions are generally on a good path. The last 10-15 years have been a remarkable improvement of the quality in the Danish healthcare system, with lower mortality rates, significantly decreased waiting times and the first of a range of new hospitals have already been built. Through Population health management, Value based health care, Big data, Personalised medicine and a political obligation to not only deliver health care services, but provide Health for all (Health for all), it is the aim, that we can keep improving.

But despite improvements Denmark is facing the same challenges as the rest of Europe when it comes to chronic illnesses, comorbidity, demography etc. which puts a tremendous pressure on the health services, whether it is regional or local. And that’s why the participants were introduced to both the areas where progress are made and to those where it is still early to say if we have found the right track to solve the challenges we are facing: Can value based health care help steering hospitals budgets, how much time does it take to train the staff to work based on this, is the effort worthwhile, will it last, how about the quality in general practice and the crucial cooperation between sectors, will we be able to use the technical solutions at hand, can we change the culture of how we work, are regular controls really necessary, based on evidence or could the doctors time be used better? etc. So far it is not possible to come with bullet proof solutions to all the challenges health care is facing all over Europe. The talks must continue as to how each health care system can use the means at hand as they see fit, and that fits their version of health care.

A large group of 37 people from 11 countries participated in the Study Tour. A tight programme took the participants through a brief introduction to the general health care system in Denmark of free and equal access, to mega trends and visions in health care and gave an insight into the work with quality in health care from both the national, regional and local angle, as Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen (Rigshospitalet) and the Local Government Denmark (Local Government Denmark) were visited. Even the dinner was with a point, as Meyers House of Food (Meyers)  gave an insight into how they work with quality from farm to table.

Summary of the event in German by Dr. Doris Voit, MBA

The post The Danish Way in Quality and Health Care – For senior healthcare professionals, managers and policy makers 10 – 11 April 2018, Copenhagen (Denmark) appeared first on Hope.

Description:

During the study tour, you will have the possibility to understand the way the Healthcare Ecosystem is designed in order to meet the needs and challenges of the future, how the testing laboratory is connected to serve the University Hospital activity, and how the Oulu University Hospital will be renovated by 2030.

The OuluHealth ecosystem comprises several stakeholders from academia, the public sector, and the private sector. The principal idea is to facilitate open collaboration and to accelerate innovation by bringing together various partners able to contribute to the needs of the health care sector. The ecosystem approach enables the combination of expertise from wireless information technologies and life science to introduce smart ICT solutions for delivering advanced, personalised, connected health service solutions.

OuluHealth is located in Kontinkangas campus close to the centre of the Oulu city. The OuluHealth campus has developed around the Oulu University Hospital, opened in the 1970s, and is quite unique in the way that it compactly combines both public and private actors in the health care sector, ranging from Biocenter Oulu to a wide spectrum of small and medium-sized businesses.

Oulu University Hospital in the chair of OuluHealth board. BusinessOulu is in charge of the ecosystem collaboration facilitation and supporting the companies in growth and commercialisation. Centre for Health and Technology is responsible of coordinating the research and innovation activities. OuluHealth Labs offers a unique innovation platform which enables citizen and professionals involvement. OuluHealth belongs to the international network of the European Connected Health Alliance.

Multidisciplinary top researchers, access to different health data sources and numerous start-ups create the basis for thriving RDI activities. Centre for Health and Technology manages OuluHealth´s RDI cooperation. The North Finland sample collections of Biobank Borealis and The Birth Cohort Studies research program provide excellent possibilities for RDI.

OYS TestLab is a development and test environment for companies to test and develop their products and ideas in an authentic hospital environment and with genuine users. Oulu University Hospital uses the laboratory to develop their processes and to model and simulate building projects for the Future Hospital programme.

OYS TestLab locates within Oulu University Hospital. The laboratory covers 300 m2 on two floors. Various hospital units can be built into open spaces: an operating theatre, clinics, wards, control rooms, waiting areas etc. TestLab has a 3D virtual space and capacity for testing 5G network.

Welcome to visit Oulu!

Practical information:

You can download the programme here.

The applicants are kindly reminded to complete the application form in English and to send it by e-mail to Mrs Mira Salmi: [email protected].

The deadline for application is 15 May 2017.

For further information regarding the programme, please contact:
Mrs. Mira Salmi
E-mail : [email protected]
Phone : +358 8 315 2255

The post OuluHealth Ecosystem and Oulu University Hospital TestLab – 1-2 June 2017 – Oulu (Finland) appeared first on Hope.

PAQS ASBL is a newly created organization bringing together most healthcare stakeholders in Brussels and Wallonia with the objective of improving quality and safety in healthcare. PAQS ASBL organized a HOPE Study Tour on Quality and Safety on 4 and 5 May 2017 in Brussels.

During these two days, participants got to know how things are currently organized in Belgium, which policies have been implemented for which results, and how future policies may look like. Participants were expected to briefly present Quality and Safety policies existing in their countries and to exchange opinions and ideas on how things are evolving throughout Europe.

Programme

The post HOPE study tour on Quality and Safety – 4-5 May 2017, Brussels (Belgium) appeared first on Hope.

Created by Toyota in the 1970s, Lean Management is a method of organizing work that intends to improve production with fewer resources. To this end, Lean Management relies on the active participation of all stakeholders to optimize the overall performance of organizations and reduce waste.

While many French companies have already adopted lean management, what about the first experiments conducted in the French public hospitals?

This HOPE study tour was an opportunity for European professionals to discover a successful experience of Lean development in public hospitals on site.

Hospices civils de Lyon, the second largest university hospital in France, integrate all disciplines, and bring together 14 multidisciplinary or specialized establishments. They employ more than 22,000 professionals with the most advanced equipment.

In addition to meeting a number of management and field staff, this study tour made it possible to understand the contribution of Lean Management in hospitals and to cover the issues raised by its implementation in one of Europe largest university hospital group.

For further information please contact: [email protected].

Announcement

The post Lean Management in Hospitals: the example of the Hospices civils de Lyon – 2-3 February 2017 – Lyon (France) appeared first on Hope.

Over the 29th and 30th October 2015, Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust acted as host to an international two day event for delegates from all over Europe including: Italy; Spain; Portugal; Belgium; Germany; Latvia and Estonia. The event was held in collaboration with HOPE (European Hospital and Healthcare Federation) and its UK Partner, the NHS European office, which is part of the NHS Confederation. At the ‘European Exchange Study Visit’ held at Darent Valley Hospital, delegates heard from some of the most influential people in healthcare today about how policy and innovation is changing the way that patient care is delivered by the NHS. The event was themed around how to maintain and improve the quality of care delivered to patients across Europe, including ensuring patients receive compassionate care.

Ali Strowman, Deputy Director of Nursing and Co-ordinating Host said: “This is an extremely exciting event and one that we feel privileged to host. In partnership with HOPE and the NHS Confederation we have been able to deliver a programme that includes speakers who help shape today’s healthcare including: Professor Sir Mike Richards, Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Care Quality Commission; Jackie Smith, NMC Chief Executive and Registrar; Jan Sobieraj, Managing Director of the NHS Leadership Academy and Dr Johnny Marshall OBE, Director of Policy, NHS Confederation.”

The European Exchange Study Visit has given us the opportunity to share with our partners in the rest of Europe how healthcare is structured, funded, delivered and regulated in England. We also heard from the leaders of Trusts and CCGs who provided a local perspective on how healthcare is constantly adapting to change in order to continue to deliver the best possible care in the communities they serve.

Elisabetta Zanon, Director, NHS European Office, said: “Our work with Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust and HOPE has helped to showcase the NHS as a model for patient care to Europe. Many of the challenges faced by the NHS are also felt by health systems across Europe. Our work with HOPE is important to facilitate the collaboration between NHS leaders and peers in Europe, sharing insights that can improve care and keep health systems, here and abroad sustainable.”

This two- day event signals a positive collaborative future for NHS Trusts and colleagues from across Europe to work together to address the challenges facing the health sector today.

Brochure

Presentations 29 October

Presentations 30 October

The post Assuring quality in the English NHS – 29-30 October 2015 – Dartford – Kent (UK) appeared first on Hope.

The German Hospital Federation (DKG – Deutsche Krankenhausgesellschaft) organised the study visit “Quality assurance in German hospital care” on 30-31 October 2014 in Berlin. 25 participants coming from 12 EU Member States and Serbia were joining the workshop. Amongst them were representatives from ministries, from hospital organisations as well from hospitals, all being in charge of quality in health- and hospital care within their organisations.

Mr Marc Schreiner (Director EU-policies/international affairs) welcomed the participants in the premises of DKG’s headquarter and introduced the organisation as umbrella association of all German hospitals. DKG, despite being a private organisation, is mandated by law to contribute to the system of joint self-government in German healthcare, e.g. in the Federal Joint Committee, where binding quality indicators for hospital care are set up by service providers’ and health insurances’ organisations. He finally glanced at the running political debates and the growing idea to give “quality” a greater importance when planning and pricing hospital care.

Mrs Dr Doris Voit (policy officer in DKG’s “human resources management/hospital organisation” department) in her speech explained what DKG was undertaking as a federal organisation to promote quality in hospital care, highlighting the contribution to work done in the Federal Joint Committee in detail. She additionally gave an overview about all legal acts requiring efforts on quality assurance in healthcare. She then focused on patient safety and resumed all major national initiatives since 2003 describing actors, aims and outcomes. She also gave information on CIRS (critical incident reporting systems) and explained the role of clinical guidelines in German hospital care. She concluded by expecting a more cross-sectoral approach of quality assurance to come.

Mr Axel Mertens (also policy officer in DKG’s “human resources management/hospital organisation” department) added examples on DKG’s activities on quality assurance, e.g. the negotiation of quality indicators on structures and processes as well as caring for the financing of special measures and enabling of transparency by reporting requirements. He then focused on two areas of special expertise, like organ donation as the first example. He described the need for in house-coordinators and the procedural requirements for explantation, storage and transport of organs, reporting structures and needs as well as the introduction of minimum volumes. For the area of premature births he showed examples of minimum standards for staff and infrastructure, on minimum volumes as well as of reporting requirements. He ended by stating the central role of quality in hospital care which requires reliable financing crucially.

Dr Markus Wörz (desk officer in the department of quality assurance in healthcare and cross-sectoral health services of the Federal Joint Committee) extensively described the composition and working methods of the institution he is working for also explaining its tasks, like e.g. the setup of binding quality standards for service providers. He explained the legal basis of the institution’s mandate and the impact of its directives for quality assurance. Additionally he showed details of several of those directives, e.g. on paediatric cardiac surgery, minimum volume requirements or on chronic renal dialysis. But he showed also an example for a more general aspect a directive can imply, i.e. the directive for quality assurance across healthcare institutions and cross-sector. At the end of his presentation he pointed to the quality report of hospitals and the external quality assurance process as examples of the consequences of the Federal Joint Committee’s work and mentioned the official cooperation with the AQUA-institute as the executive body for the external quality assurance model.

Mrs Professor Dr Anke Bramesfeld presented AQUA-institute in which she is working, its tasks and working methods. She first told the history of her institute’s involvement in the process of external quality assurance since 2009 and the number of quality indicators being the basis of this process. She then explained the execution of the data gathering and evaluation process by the different players on federal and regional level as well as the single steps of the so called “structured dialogue” between representatives of the AQUA-institute and the hospital, in the case that the data on a quality indicator reported from the respective hospital does not match a predefined range of acceptable results. She finally gave examples of the outcomes and statistics of the external quality assurance process. She additionally described the methodology for the development of new indicators with its different steps of identification of gaps, involvement of experts and its final approving of the indicators by the members of the Federal Joint committee. She also shared her expectation for the future including a stronger cross-sectional approach for quality assurance, a widened scope of use of the data gathered in this process and the development of a comparative public reporting. She summed up by clarifying that this special quality assurance process can deliver transparency but not overcome quality problems.

Dr Wulf-Dietrich Leber as the Director of the division “hospitals” of the Federal Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds (SHI funds) at the beginning of his presentation gave an overview about his organisation and linked to the topic of the seminar by describing the effects of the introduction of the DRG-system (diagnoses related groups) as the basis for hospital financing, leading to more transparency of and competition by quality of healthcare in hospitals. He added that the billing rules also could provide incentives for better quality in care, too. He then referred to the external quality assurance process triggered by the Federal Joint Committee and concluded, that the achieved high level of transparency for the available indicators and the quality reports of hospitals does not deprive from the need to create more reliable transparency, e.g. by including other healthcare sectors. He ended by advocating for a stronger role of minimum volumes for healthcare services or for “pay for performance” as another steering tools for more quality as a political perspective of the SHI funds.

At the beginning of the second day, Dr Henrik Herrmann as a medical visitor of KTQ (“Cooperation for transparency and quality”) described the organisational structures and the composition of owners of KTQ, amongst the DKG, SHI Funds, German Medical Association and the Nursing Council. He explained the concept of the voluntary accreditation especially on the quality management of hospitals as a consensual dialogue at eye level. He described the accreditation process itself, including a self-assessment of a hospital alongside the KTQ-catalogue as a first step to be followed by an external assessment and an onsite-visit by KTQ-visitors, finishing with the publication of the KTQ-quality report and the awarding of a certificate. He continued describing the different assessment categories, e.g. quality management with its examination system “pdca” (plan, do, check, act). He pointed out, that the KTQ-certificate has duration of three years only with the chance of recertification. He ended by showing examples of KTQ’s international experiences with accreditation of hospitals in China.

Mr Christian Lautner as the CEO of “qualitätskliniken.de” presented his company and its “five dimensions of quality”, being the basis for the transparency register with its almost 300 participating hospitals all over Germany and across all kinds of ownership. He explained details on the questionnaires on outcome quality, patients’ safety and satisfaction, physicians’ satisfaction as well on ethics which all have to be filled out by patients and service providers. He continued explaining that the answers are enabling rankings of hospitals and concrete search tools for the users of the website qualitätskliniken.de with its already more than 500.000 visitors yearly since its creation in June 2010. Hospitals could benefit from the assessment by gaining another tool of presentation and by – on the occasion of the evaluation – getting a push for hospital internal discussions on quality improvement. The process would also enable the management of a hospital to have an additional controlling tool based on measurable quality indicators.

After these presentations, the participants were carried to the military hospital and welcomed by Colonel MD Dr Christian Zechel as the deputy hospital director and head of quality management. After an introduction to the history, mandate and current state of the hospital he showed different examples of quality assurance in the local organisation of this hospital, e.g. an integrated it-system enabling access to patient files across the different departments and showing compliance with quality management requirements. He ended his presentation by giving some examples of certifications and accreditations of different departments. Participants afterwards were shown around to decorated wards, e.g. the “wound centre” which received a certificate “wound centre, dermatology, vascular surgery and trauma surgery” in September 2014 only, being the third hospital in Germany awarded. The visit ended at the rescue services centre of the hospital which also is certified and running the most modern models of rescue cars.

Presentations

Mr Marc Schreiner – Quality assurance in German hospital care

Mrs Dr Doris Voit – Patient Safety in Germany from the hospital perspective

Mr Axel Mertens – Quality of medical treatment

Dr Markus Wörz – The Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) and Quality Assurance in Health Care

Mrs Professor Dr Anke Bramesfeld – Mandatory Quality Assurance in the German Health Care System

Dr Wulf-Dietrich Leber – Perspectives of the health insurance funds – Role and aims in the quality assurance system

Dr Henrik Herrmann – KTQ-GmbH – Cooperation for Transparency and Quality in Healthcare

Mr Christian Lautner – Introduction of Qualitätskliniken.de

The post Quality assurance in German hospital care – 30-31 October 2014 – Berlin (Germany) appeared first on Hope.

The Oulu Healthcare Ecosystem headquarters is in the University campus that hosts over 100 organisations involved in the field, key stakeholders and about 8.000 employees, making it a centre of excellence weather at the global and local level. The heart of the campus is represented by Oulu University Hospital (OYS), which is responsible for offering highly specialised medical care in the Northern Finland. Its services cover more than the 50% of national territory and are addressed to 730.000 inhabitants. OYS treats approximately 123.000 patients per year and employs 7.000 healthcare professionals.

The main projects carried out by Oulu Healthcare Ecosystem and financed at the national level are called AVAUS and INKA. They define and model regional and national social welfare and healthcare services with the support of technological solutions. In addition, a further programme called INDICO produces a “roadmap” of different possibilities to support individualised health and wellbeing processes. Its aim is to find out a way to better utilise personal health data.

During the study tour, participants had the possibility to understand the way the Healthcare Ecosystem is designed in order to meet the needs and challenges of the future, how the testing laboratory is connected to serve the university hospital activity and how the Oulu University Hospital will be renovated by 2030. The goal is to enhance the processes, increase productivity of work and improve patient safety and quality. Renovation programme was launched in 2010 with the opening of the new building for day surgery. It offers modern outpatient facilities, digital infrastructure and automated logistics, including a patient guiding system. The next step in the rebuilding scheme, which was already planned, is the new hospital for women and children.

The post Healthcare Ecosystem – 10-13 June 2014 – Oulu (Finland) appeared first on Hope.

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