T-Systems is supporting dialog in the healthcare sector and invited guests to an expert panel titled "Hospitals - A Bottomless Pit?". In the plenum, invited experts discussed solutions for optimizing resources and gave recommendations on how to handle future health sector reforms. Dr. Hans Jörg Schelling, chairman of the Allgemeine Unfallversicherungsanstalt (AUVA), started off with a quick analysis of the situation: "If everything proceeds as before, hospitals really will become a bottomless pit for resources. Here in Austria, we have neither a quality standard nor have we managed to develop competency centers. We have also failed to establish a quality assurance system." Berndt Martetschläger, manager of the 'hospitals' Projektentwicklungsgesellschaft, drew three central points for approaching the problem: "We need to improve quality and establish a quality assurance system. We also need to optimize the allocation of services who does what where, and whether we can afford redundant providers. Finally, we need to create financial incentives."
"To me, efficiency in the hospital sector means allocating resources where they benefit patients the most," said Dr. Michael Heinisch, manager of the Vinzenz Group. "I do not support exploding costs resulting from investments in duplicate structures and duplicate work, but I am for investments that provide maximum benefit for patients."
"We cannot pinch on quality when we talk about finances - quality must not just be maintained but improved even further. In the future, we need to deal more seriously with the issue of quality assurance," predicted Berndt Martetschläger. Dr. Hans Jörg Schelling also considers quality to be top priority, and emphasized: "Improving quality and lowering costs are not mutually exclusive - it is a matter of overall planning."
- "The Austrian healthcare system still lacks the pressure and motivation to actually change anything," said Dr. Martin Gleitsmann, director of the Social Policy and Health department at the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber. "It's not a matter of just lowering expenses but of achieving the greatest benefit for patients. The hospital system requires more transparency in the future, i.e. 'eHealth' must be promoted. eHealth is advancing far too slowly in Austria. Technologies such as the e-Card are a very important foundation. The task now is to expand them, but the necessary networking is unfortunately still lacking in Austria. There is currently a risk that each state will develop its own stand-alone solutions, eliminating the benefits offered by networking. We need to eliminate these fears quickly and establish federal standards." Dr. Michael Heinisch added on the topic of standards: "Our system needs a central buyer for health in the future, one that will look after quality, costs and patient satisfaction."
Dr. Martin Gleitsmann goes a step further: "We need a national quality assurance system, business-like hospital management and common control and planning." All the experts agreed when it came to "single-source financing," as Dr. Hans Jörg Schelling clarified: "As long as we have separate finance systems, all the providers will just look out for themselves. Our system will remain 'sick' until it becomes networked and coordinated." A central financing system was also brought up in regard to benchmarks. We should create a system to compare the various institutions. It's not a matter of the benchmark being right or wrong, but of comparing why others do better than me," as Berndt Martetschläger put it.
The T-Systems Dialog Forum for Health is a platform for stimulating dialog and information exchange in a small group of experts from the ranks of decision makers in the Austrian health care system. Manfred Kösner, Vice President of Business Center Health at T-Systems in Austria, announced that the dialog forum will recommence in Spring 2009. The aim is to discuss concrete solutions and strategies for hospitals and hospital finance in order to use existing resources more effectively and efficiently.
About T-Systems Austria
T-Systems Austria is one of the leading service providers for information and communications technology in Austria. The focus lies on five core market segments - manufacturing, public administration, public healthcare, financial services and telecommunications. T-Systems combines expertise in information technology (IT) and telecommunications (TC) and supports customers along their entire value chain through all phases of complex system implementations - from establishing the infrastructure through solution development, implementation and integration up to actual operation. In the healthcare sector, T-Systems Austria is our international competency center. In 2007, T-Systems Austria and its 640 employees generated sales of EUR 173.8 million. Including the SDS (Software Data Service), the Group has 860 employees in Austria. For further information about T-Systems Austria and our services, please see www.t-systems.at.
About T-Systems
T-Systems brings together high-quality services for Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The wide-ranging know-how from both fields means that the business customer division of Deutsche Telekom has become a preferred partner of multinational corporations, small and medium-sized companies and also public sector institutions. Over 160,000 customers from every industry worldwide benefit from the company's particular expertise in providing integrated ICT solutions from a single source. T-Systems is the only company to offer its own complete ICT portfolio and to combine IT and communication technology to produce new solutions.