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