The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc across the globe. Healthcare systems are facing significant financial challenges in terms of lost revenue, resource shortages, and increased healthcare costs. Never before has there been a greater need to focus on planning and budgeting, identifying reasons for the lack of preparedness by the healthcare sector, improving accountability, analysing performance, and identifying and priroritising strategies and interventions that are cost-effective and that can help healthcare systems around the world recover and forge ahead.
In our latest issue, Show Me the Money, our contributors analyse the economic impact of the pandemic on the healthcare industry, the financial burden of chronic disease management and other economic challenges faced by this sector. They talk about strategies that could help healthcare recover from these challenges and attain a new normal and discuss novel solutions and tools that can help improve the bottom line.
Florencio Travieso talks about data monetisation and how data can be used as an economic asset to maximise efficiency, reduce costs and add business value. Hans Erik Henriksen highlights the continued increase in chronic diseases, the resources and costs associated with the treatment of these diseases and the need for a new approach to reduce these costs while improving patient quality of life.
Janette Hughes, Frans Folkvord and Astrid van der Velde introduce the concept of Hospitalisation@Home and the use of a MAFEIP tool that helped assess the impact and cost-effectiveness of this digital home hospitalisation intervention for heart failure patients.
Pangiotia Pietri talks about the health, social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and highlights the need for more effective strategies for both disease control and economic stability beyond lockdowns and quarantine measures, while Emma Sutcliffe presents the patient’s side of the story and discusses why patient engagement is important and how long term patient engagement programmes can result in cost savings and a huge return-on-investment for healthcare organisations.
In our Management Matters section, Diane Bell discusses the power of digital in healthcare, especially evident during the pandemic, and emphasises the importance of human contact and the need to establish digitally enabled healthcare while prioritising the human touch.
Stefan Heinemann and Jochen Werner talk about the principle of digital prevention and why value creation in healthcare should not be limited to disease treatment but should also focus on precision prevention.
We hope you will enjoy this issue. As always, your feedback is welcome.
Happy Reading!