The health care systems of many developing countries are facing a severe crisis. Problems of financing services leads to high patient fees which make institutions of Western health care unaffordable for the majority o...
详细信息
The health care systems of many developing countries are facing a severe crisis. Problems of financing services leads to high patient fees which make institutions of Western health care unaffordable for the majority of the rural poor. The conflict between sustainability and affordability of the official health care system challenges both local decision-makers and health management consultants. Decisions must be made soon so that the existing health care systems can survive. However, these decisions must be based on sound data, especially on the costs of health care services. The existing accounting systems of most hospitals in developing countries do not provide decision-makers with these data. Costs are generally underestimated. The leadership of the 16 hospitals of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania is currently analyzing how the existing health care services should be restructured. Therefore, reliable estimates of the costs of hospitals services are required. A survey on 'Costing of health services of the Evang. Luth. Church in Tanzania' was prepared, which summarizes the results of seven months of field investigations in Lutheran hospitals. The major findings are that the costs of providing adequate services are much higher than expected. The most important factors determining these costs are the administrative efficiency of the hospital and the scope of services offered. The paper closes with some recommendations on how to improve the services in order to make them both affordable for the rural poor and financially sustainable for the Church. It is concluded that even the best improvement of technical efficiency will not safeguard the survival of the hospital-based health care services of the Lutheran Church in Tanzania. These findings call for a reallocation of health care resources to lower levels of the health care pyramid.
Healthcare organizations are faced with the responsibility of teaching their entire staff the founding principles, concepts, and practices of total quality management (TQM), to improve organizational effectiveness. Pu...
详细信息
Healthcare organizations are faced with the responsibility of teaching their entire staff the founding principles, concepts, and practices of total quality management (TQM), to improve organizational effectiveness. Purchasing training products from outside consultants can be costly, but healthcare leaders can design and develop their own TQM training products, integrating each product with their organization's mission and values. This article describes how a Catholic healthcare system successfully developed and deployed a compendium of TQM educational products throughout the health-care system.
Healthcare organizations are being challenged to find ways to leverage improvement efforts. Collaboration offers an avenue for working together toward a common goal. Healthcare leaders can initiate collaborative proje...
详细信息
Healthcare organizations are being challenged to find ways to leverage improvement efforts. Collaboration offers an avenue for working together toward a common goal. Healthcare leaders can initiate collaborative projects to analyze common clinical problems and to share best practices. This article describes how a Catholic healthcare system successfully initiated a systemwide collaborative clinical quality improvement project to deal with patient falls.
暂无评论