Jan Berger's Profile

I think every organisation should be transparant on the revenue and the spending at the hospital level. In our hospital this information is shared witje everybody. Within each department the level of transparency is left to the departmental leader. In my department we share all information down to the individual level. Most colleagues are highly competitive, so sharing the information, combined with the right controls, can be a very powerful driver for growth.

What we try to do in a similar population is not emphasize the use of the website and brochures but encourage patients to bring their partner, friends, children,… to the consultation.
Our nephrology department just won an award with their ‘klare taal’ (clear language) project. They organize medical language courses for patients and language and cultural awareness courses for hospital staff to improve the language used by providers.

What we try to do in a similar population is not emphasize the use of the website and brochures but encourage patients to bring their partner, friends, children,… to the consultation.
Our nephrology department just won an award with their ‘klare taal’ (clear language) project. They organize medical language courses for patients and hospital staff to improve the language used by providers.

We are currently looking into the possibility of working with Awell health (https://awellhealth.com). Please have a look at the website and if interested let me know. I can get you in touch with their ceo.

I completely agree with your viewpoint: there is already a lot of administration to be done, and it will increase.
However, I believe we need to push some of the administration away from the caregivers. Does the doctor or the nurse really need to do all of the administration they are doing? Or can we push part of this administration to an administrative workforce? When I started at my current job, the physiotherapists were making all the appointments themselves, rescheduling patients, taking phone calls, sending reimbursement requests to the payers,… This is often seen as a way to reduce costs or improve efficiency because an administrative workforce would cost extra money, but I believe the opposite is true. Those people are (apparently 1/3 of their time) not working on the maximum of their skill level and so they are a big cost to the organisation during their administrative tasks. I believe it is highly rewarding, both in job satisfaction for the individual caregiver as economically for the organisation, to invest in administrative support on the microlevel of (a part of) a department. I believe it is very important, especially in health care, to let people perform at the top of their skill level.

If you want to prepare for bundled payments for chronic disease management you will need to very clearly define the pathways patients follow through your system, allocate all the costs correctly (with TDABC as we learned), and measure your results (we try to use ICHOM standard sets whenever possible; http://www.ichom.org/). The combination of these three steps allows you to see what you do, how much it costs, and what result it delivers. If you change anything in your practice (for example a certain test only once a year and not four times a year) you can see the effect on both cost and result. I believe this is a good way to create value for your patients and for the payer.