HHE Perspectives on Hospital and Industry Partnerships | Page 6

Perspectives on hospital and industry partnerships:
The aim of improving outcomes, increasing patient satisfaction and reducing costs
Chapter 1:
Existing methods to improve outcomes,
increase patient satisfaction and reduce costs
Key learnings:
In all represented countries, hospitals have processes in place to facilitate hospital-wide strategies
to improve outcomes within their budgets.
●
Tender processes have evolved over the years to maximise the hospital benefit; historically they were
based on products, but now there is movement towards services.
●
Partnerships with industry where pathway change is needed could potentially accelerate this process.
●
The status quo
H
HE began the survey by asking stakeholders what structures
exist within their hospitals to allow for hospital-wide strategies
that improve clinical outcomes, increase patient satisfaction and
reduce costs. Insights suggest that there are a number of structures
that already exist, including formulary committees, nursing
commissions, management committees, budget commissions and
health council assessment centres. The personnel involved in these
structures range from clinicians, pharmacists and epidemiologists
to economists, hospital administrators and directors.
In Europe, generally the interaction between hospital purchasing
and medical device sales representatives takes different forms
depending on the stage of a tender process. When defining a new
tender and understanding how to evolve the tender to select the
best solution, the interaction is open. During the tender process,
the only interaction is when additional information is required.
Following a successful tender, after the specified interactions
within the tender agreement, the interaction is as unrestricted as
before the tender process.
The future of hospital–industry partnerships
T
he focus on existing processes within specific European
countries can have a significant impact on the openness
to working with industry. In Turkey, the interaction between
medical device representatives and clinicians appears to be quite
restricted; however, for the most part these interactions revolve
around individual products as opposed to services, potentially
allowing for the partnership for services to evolve.
and systems development, having the manufacturers’ support on an
ongoing basis with user-friendly solutions would be very beneficial.
In the past, when considering services set for tender in France,
the tender documents would describe the different needs,
training, education, etc. However, the focus is currently on the
selection criteria, specifying how the supplier could help the
hospital achieve the desired outcome – for example, increasing
the quality for patients by reducing their time spent in hospital.
A French General Manager said that they were currently looking
for strategies to reduce the length of stay in the hospital, which
would positively impact the hospital budget.
In the UK, it was suggested that engagements at an STP level with
medical device companies could potentially accelerate processes
where changes to pathways are needed. The Head of Contracting
Management at one hospital pointed out that ‘if hospitals have their
own procurement processes, and changing pathways rely on new
equipment, this could result in a barrier to success’. However, the UK
respondents specifically and uniquely cited the potential benefit
of value-based hospital–industry partnerships as a way to address
some of the shortages within the hospital sector. The feeling was
that in areas such as writing of business cases, specialist IT support
In some sectors, there is a perceived difference in the
partnerships between hospitals and pharmaceutical or medical
device companies. An Italian Pharmacy Director described the
relationship between hospitals and medical device companies
as ‘fragmentary’ as the medical device companies were generally
4
HHE 2018 | hospitalhealthcare.com