TPG CEO presents
TPG CEO Peter Bakker presented the report 'Better Care for Less' to the Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport Hans Hoogervorst and to the Dutch Hospital Association (NVZ) and the Order of Medical Specialists. At the request of the minister and the hospitals, under the Better Faster project TPG has investigated the healthcare sector from its professional logistics point of view.
The report shows that logistics improvements can go hand-in-hand with major improvements in quality: patients needing to visit the hospital less frequently and once there not having to wait as long before, during and after the treatment. The patients can furthermore count on receiving more attention from the nurses and doctors. The logistics improvements will also result in efficiency savings of between 20 and 25%.
The recommendations have been outlined in a vision paper in which the problem areas are identified and proposals for the improvement of the logistics processes in healthcare are presented. The report also provides a number of practical success stories. The report covers patient logistics, goods logistics and medicine logistics.
Patient logistics can be improved substantially by putting the patient first and applying a 'pull system'. Significant timesaving can be achieved by quickly identifying whether a patient will require less or more than a 'standard treatment'. From healthcare professionals and in TPG's own experience in comparable logistics processes it has emerged that in 60 to 80% of the cases a standard treatment is required. In this sort of system the patient knows sooner what the situation is, the curative care professionals gain a better understanding of the processes and the chance of mistakes is minimised. The result: motivated employees who feel encouraged to work towards improving the system and who are rewarded when this is achieved.
As long as the set conditions have been met, the anticipated efficiency savings of 20 to 25% (two to two and a half billion euros per year) can be achieved within three to five years. These conditions include the proper assessment and registration of treatments, making this information available to all parties concerned and the inclusion of positive incentives that really stimulate healthcare workers to discover improvements.
Goods logistics can be improved quite simply by clearly setting out the responsibilities for purchasing. By combining purchasing volumes and storing the separate stock in a central warehouse, which would be managed by a specialised party, there would be a potential efficiency saving of 150 million euros to be gained.
And finally, medicine logistics can be improved significantly by opting for direct distribution of medicine for chronic users. In this proposal, on the basis of the anticipated demand from the patients, the health insurers purchase the medicine directly from a pharmaceutical company. Using an electronic prescription system, the doctor can register which medicine a patient needs. The medicine is then prepared in a central warehouse and delivered to the patient directly. By reorganising the logistics process in this manner, efficiency savings of 700 to 850 million euros per year could be expected, a saving that could be achieved in two to three years.
TPG has been working on this report for about three months. During this time the company has consulted numerous organisations involved in curative care. These consultations have made a major contribution to the substance of this report. The report can be found in its entirety at www.tpg.nl and www.snellerbeter.nl.
