Could you present us the two/three
expectations that your organisation/country
have today on improving the quality of
healthcare using the experiences and
competencies of patients?
Patient orientation – in that patients shall be in
the focus of the decisions and actions and are
enabled to take an active part – is essential in
making efforts to improve quality of care.
Active participation, however, requires a certain
degree of personal competence and responsibility.
Thus, in order to empower people to be actively
involved, strengthening the health literacy of the
population and vulnerable groups by appropriate
measures is a declared common goal of the health
reform partners over the next four years. The
measures envisaged include the enhancement of
independent information in the internet health
portal (www.gesundheit.gv.at) on health and
diseases as well as on possibilities of healthcare
provision, available evidence of treatment
options, and on the functioning of the healthcare
system. Additionally, there will be standards
developed on how written information on health
denmark
Mrs Eva M. Weinreich-Jensen
HOPE President, Danish Regions
Could you outline the strategy/approach
adopted in your country on quality and
patient safety or the two/three initiatives
in the hospital and healthcare sector in the
past ten years?
Quality and patient safety are very important
in the Danish Quality approach. Denmark
established the National Quality Programme
in 2016. It aims explicitly at building a nationwide
improvement culture through eight national
targets and a number of indicators,
interdisciplinary collaborations and a national
leadership programme. The approach is based on
a close cooperation among the State, the regions
and the municipalities. The goal is putting patients
first and improving the results for them.
The programme replaced the accreditation in
hospital and pre-hospital settings. Each hospital
and region set their own goals in relation to the
overall national targets based on the challenges
they face. National learning initiatives and
collaborations are established, with the aim of
improving the clinical quality result in specific
areas, and the experience for the patients and their
relatives. In many ways, though, the work on
quality was handed back to clinicians. This shall be
interpreted as an act of confidence towards the
health professionals and their inherent ambitions
to improve clinical quality.
Patient experiences became
the starting point for
quality improvements and
optimisation of pathways
issues can become most clearly understandable.
In order to improve the oral communication
between patients and healthcare providers and
support both in being ‘partners’, healthcare
providers will be trained to improve their
communication skills.
It was also agreed to continue the regular
cross-sector surveys on patient satisfaction with
the service provision in the healthcare system.
The survey captures the patients’ experiences on
care processes, in particular the communication
and care processes at the interfaces. Data suggests
that patients’ involvement in care processes may
bring about an optimisation in the healthcare
service provision. Surveys repeated on a regular
basis allow for the monitoring of services and
evaluation of improvement measures set. Patient
experiences and opinions thus become the
starting point for quality improvements and for
the optimisation of patient pathways in the
healthcare system.
Could you present us the two/three
expectations that your organisation/country
have today on improving the quality of
healthcare using the experiences and
competencies of patients?
Improving the quality of healthcare using the
experiences and competencies of patients is
a central feature of the Danish approach. Patient
safety is one of the eight national targets. Some
examples of initiatives implemented in this
regard are the use of patient-reported outcome
measures (PROMs) and of surveys on patient
satisfaction covering many areas of the healthcare
denmark
Total health expenditure as % of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Percentage of current public expenditure on health as % of total current health expenditure
Hospital current health expenditure, as % of total current health expenditure
Out-of-pocket expenditure, % of current expenditure on health
All hospital beds per 100,000 inhabitants
Acute care hospital beds per 100,000 inhabitants
Acute care admissions/discharges per 100 inhabitants
Average length of stay for acute care hospitals (bed-days)
Practicing physicians per 100,000 inhabitants
Practicing nurses per 100,000 inhabitants
26
HHE 2018 | hospitalhealthcare.com
2000 2008 2015
8.1%
9.5%
10.3%
83.1%
84.0%
84.1%
43.7%
44.5%
44.1%
15.4%
14.1%
13.7%
429.0
357.0
253.0
426.0
351.0
246.0
15.2
13.1
n.a
3.8
n.a
n.a
291.0
349.0
366.0
1237.0
1490.0
1670.0