What does quality have to do with strategy? The answer: 'evidence-based health care'. Our 'treatment management' project on workflow-orientated analysis and optimisation.

The importance of medical controlling has undergone rapid development in the recent past. Outside legislative factors, such as general target-setting, play an equal role in presenting the patient with an efficient and moreover high-quality service.

Along with the already available data, additional information regarding treatment is becoming increasingly more important. The recognition of organisational weaknesses as well as reflection on the algorithm from the point of view of the patients and treatment is in this regard essential.

The databank-supported presentation of all relevant single factors concerning diagnostic and therapy for the patient serves as a basis for this. In addition, the structure of the given databank enables the analysis of treatment procedures for similar groups of patients and diagnoses (DRGs). Changes concerning either the department or the entire hospital flow back into the databank medium. The software we use originates from the USA, where it has been implemented for many years in the field of clinical pathways, DRGs and managed care.

The pathways have been placed in the system and apply to all professional groups; all relevant features of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures that shape the stay of patients are contained here. However, it is of central importance that our pathways are integrated completely into the existing databank-landscape. For example, the system delivers and receives data regarding the management of patients, management information-systems and communications containing assignments and diagnostic findings as well as documentation for doctors and nurses. In this way time-relating measures (prescriptions, examinations, etc.) or those dependent on the results of treatment measures may be transmitted immediately via a wireless system to doctors and nurses directly into the clinic communication system. Processed pathways can be analysed in relation to planning or in the course of time. The analysis-tool responsible for this even presents recommendations for the optimisation of existing pathways.
In light of analyses of diagnostic and therapeutic courses dependent on results of single events, the entire structure of the hospital alongside the optimisation of separate processes and the service portfolio can be aligned to the recognition of process-analyses in their strategic extensions. In this way quality-management becomes a matter of course.

Our tele-radiology project: a radiology department for two hospitals

Following the union of our hospitals the question of how to guarantee a modern radiological diagnosis with a background of fast medical-technical development for both hospitals arose. Here one thing was instantly clear: the concept of a radiology department for each hospital was inefficient.

Investment in tele-radiology brought both of the following: an economic solution in conjunction with a high level of diagnostic comfort for the patients of both hospitals.

The radiological images are digitally reproduced, modified, saved and transmitted via a 155 Mbps connection.

With the help of an extensive library of modification and manipulation instruments as well as numerous further functions we are able to achieve a high quality of diagnosis. Our doctors are transferred to a position where they can receive images from different locations, although conversely the images are also simultaneously available in other workplaces.

This solution opens many doors on the way to greater economic output: projects regarding co-operation with additional hospitals as well as with free-practising doctors are already underway.

Thanks to this our system is always open to the introduction of new image-producing procedures.

Through the high level of organisation of patient-traffic and the use of modern diagnostic procedures, the average waiting-time for our patients has been considerably reduced.