Abstracts by keywords: healthcare
Ensuring the continuous availability of medicines is crucial in healthcare, and supply shortages are a growing problem [1]. These are caused by global supply chain disruptions, production problems, and increasing demand [2], which can lead to significant supply problems and jeopardize patient care. Established inventory management and forecasting methods often reach their limits. According to the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM), a supply shortage is defined as "an interruption of delivery at the usual level lasting longer than two weeks or a significantly increased demand that cannot be adequately met" [1]. For patients, this becomes relevant when the prescribed medicine or an alternative medicine is not in stock and cannot be ordered from wholesalers in a timely manner. This would constitute a supply shortage. Legislation already addresses this problem in the Pharmacy Operations Ordinance, which stipulates: „[E]very pharmacy must keep in stock medicinal products and pharmacy-only medical devices sufficient to meet at least the average demand for one week“ (§ 15 ApBetrO). Furthermore, § 52b (1) of the German Medicines Act (AMG) states: „Pharmaceutical companies and operators of pharmaceutical wholesalers [...] shall ensure an adequate and continuous supply of the medicinal product so that the needs of patients within the scope of this Act are met.“
05.10.2025
Patient safety in healthcare has increasingly become the focus of global attention. It is defined as the "avoidance, prevention, and improvement of adverse events or injuries resulting from healthcare processes" (Campbell et al., 2020). At the 74th World Health Assembly (2021), the World Health Organization (WHO) presented a global action plan to prevent health threats and harm to patients arising from healthcare (World Health Organization, 2021). Strategic Goal 4 of this action plan explicitly calls for active patient involvement (PD) in the further development of healthcare. Given the continued significant number of preventable adverse events in medical healthcare, even in Germany, the tenth National Health Goal on Patient Safety was established in 2022 (Holtz & Jonitz, 2023). This goal also calls for the active involvement of patients, their relatives, or representatives, e.g., through the use of appropriate tools. B. by promoting patient safety competence and supporting patients in their active participation in the development of measures.
04.12.2023
The gross value added in the core area of the healthcare industry was around 350 billion euros in 2017. This corresponds to around 12 percent of the gross domestic product. The health sector is not only seen as an important economic sector per se, but also has great economic benefits, as health is seen as the basis for creativity and economic success (BMG 2019a, WHO). In the current discussion, in addition to medical progress and technological achievements, holistic considerations play a role, which lead to better care and can be achieved through the digital networking of the actors. Compared to other European countries, Germany lags behind when it comes to digital offerings, and the welcome initiative to establish a “Global Health Hub” cannot hide this.
04.04.2019
The high reserves of the health fund and individual health insurance companies are particularly appealing to lobbyists who advocate “carry on like this” and “more of the same”. Here a patch in favor of the hospitals, there one against the worrying excesses of the different statutory health insurance and private health insurance fees and, not to forget, more money to ensure rural care. The grand coalition is also focusing more on small-scale, incremental reforms, but is opening a new door for innovative, cross-sectoral forms of care with an innovation fund of 300 million euros annually. At the same time, everyone involved knows that, depending on the economic and immigration developments, social service providers will probably face financing problems again from 2016 or 2017, which will require more fundamental reforms and will also increase significantly in the following years. The US innovation economist Clayton Christensen is now formulating the thesis that the actual disruptive innovations or leap innovations are not initiated by politics, but by the supplying economy. He has analyzed innovation processes from various economic sectors for many decades and comes to the conclusion that in all of these areas it is ultimately always possible, according to certain rules, to develop cheaper solutions for an increasing number of consumers. He also analyzed the healthcare system. Here too, the time is ripe for cheaper solutions. In the following, this thesis will be examined and the opportunities and obstacles of breakthrough innovations for the German healthcare system will be weighed up. In healthcare, do we really always have to automatically assume that everything will be more expensive? Or have we gotten ourselves into a system that produces exactly this spiral of inflation, and are there ways to get out of it? What can we learn for the future of our healthcare system from analyzing the innovation patterns of other industries? What role do new business models that are geared towards outcomes rather than quantity of services play? And above all: who will be the market participants who will launch these breakthrough innovations?
24.01.2013
If we exploit the current potential for savings in healthcare, also in view of the experiences of other countries that spend significantly less money on longer life expectancy, we can delay the inevitable point of later rationing for a long time. However, it is important to send clear signals against the wrong incentive systems, which are essentially fed by sales-intensive, financially lucrative areas. Even though this is an unvalidated estimate, we can go another 10 years or so without rationing.
01.02.2010
Our healthcare system has a savings potential of at least 20, probably 25 % of its current volume, which consists of unnecessary procedures, interventions and operations, to a lesser extent unnecessary medicines, cures, administrative costs and much more. Rationing will eventually become unavoidable given demographic trends and advances in medicine that are leading to increasingly expensive procedures. However, this point in time can be significantly delayed by exhausting austerity measures.