Suchergebnisse

The aim of this review paper is to illustrate the areas of interest and the thinking of Hungarian hospital managers by providing a summary of the relevant Hungarian health care controlling literature and to give an introduction of potential research directions. The paper summarizes the "public discourse" and thinking on controlling, and simultaneously highlights the priorities of health care as well. The main range of interest are the financing problems and their solutions, as well as other kind of uncertainty arising from the continuous changes in roles and measures. In the early ninties some health care institutions started to apply controlling systems as a result of the introduction of performance-based financing and often published articles about it up to 2004. In 2015, a project created to enhance the operational efficiency of the health care system restarted controlling thinking: unified management measures required for hospitals may induce the development of the controlling data service, more accurate reporting, management attention, and experience sharing.

The COVID-19 crisis presented devastating effects on global healthcare, and Jordan was no exception. During such unforeseen challenges, attention shifts to healthcare leadership and management. However, limited research explored the leadership adjustment in Jordanian hospitals during the pandemic. Therefore, this study examined the challenges and opportunities that arose alongside the outbreak of the pandemic in Jordanian hospitals from the leaders' perspectives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with healthcare managers in three Jordanian hospitals, focusing on three key areas: healthcare reform integration, the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on hospital performance and healthcare quality, and management practices to handle the pandemic. Interviews were transcribed and thematically analyzed. Eleven hospital managers in seven administrative positions were involved. Three thematic outcomes were noted regarding the integration of healthcare reforms into the Jordanian healthcare system: sources of reforms, challenges of reform integration, and timely integration of the reforms. Positive impacts of the crisis on the Jordanian hospitals' performance and quality of healthcare service delivery, which are considered opportunities, resulted in three thematic outcomes: infection control protocol, staff education, and patient management. On the other hand, three thematic concepts emerged as challenges of the COVID-19 crisis: workload, stress and fatigue, and staff shortages. Lastly, this study noted three thematic outcomes regarding management practices adopted by the Jordanian healthcare systems to deal with the pandemic: staff training, monitoring, and social support.

AbstractThe Environmental Protection Agency classifies healthcare as one of the leading energy-consuming industries. Extensive energy is needed around the clock in healthcare institutions for lighting, ventilation, and operating medical equipment. However, there is a growing concern over the sustainability of energy utilization by healthcare institutions worldwide. This narrative review thus seeks to examine energy efficiency and utilization in healthcare institutions and energy management and conservation techniques and make recommendations for future optimal usage. The paper notes that healthcare institutions use different quantities of energy from diverse sources, including hydropower, biomass, solar energy, and wind power. However, energy consumption varies from one institution to another, with the number of beds and intensity of healthcare operations, with an average of 0.27 MWh m−2. Moreover, this review also identified various techniques and measures to enhance energy efficiency, such as the variant refrigerant flow technology and the combination of renewable energy sources with diesel generators to reduce the cost of electricity. Overall, healthcare institutions need energy management systems such as automated energy monitoring technologies, to check the systems' efficiency. The same techniques can also help Middle Eastern healthcare institutions with efficient energy utilization. Ultimately, the literature review aims to introduce an approach that focuses on reducing site-level consumption of energy while increasing the quality of the energy used and hence, helping reduce energy costs while conserving the environment.

Leading social scientists, empirical analysts, and policy practitioners demonstrate the various ways in which the insights of János Kornai, a renowned early analyst and critic of the command economies of Eastern European communist states, are stirring academic and policy discussions about current challenges. While dissecting the economic theories and practices in the Soviet Bloc, Kornai devised and applied concepts such as soft-budget constraints, rush versus harmonic growth, surplus versus shortage economy, non-Walrasian equilibrium, bureaucratic coordination, and the invisible power of the communist party. These concepts are commonly applied to a variety of issues in the contexts of fundamental transformation. The cases discussed in this volume include the transitional paths of post-communist economies, the pitfalls of East European market-building, economic repercussions of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and the process of integration in the Eurozone. In conclusion János Kornai's thoughts on a variety of research topics as well as the value of democracy are included as he delivered at the conference celebrating his 90th birthday in 2018