Secondary mental health care is a mix of patient groups and forms of health care, often with only limited interrelation. Years of consolidation have greatly expanded the scale of secondary care institutions. To make the challenges facing institutions more daunting there have been fundamental changes in funding and increasing demands for institutions to be accountable for quality. It’s no wonder that in many institutions the systems, skills and culture simply can’t keep pace.
Back to basics
With all this going on, how can your institution stay on course to deliver maximum added value for the patient? We see this as a question of getting back to basics, in three steps:
1. Differentiating: Putting together the optimum care offering (in terms of value) for each patient group
2. Integrating: Achieving synergy by organizing the right combination of patient groups ‘under one roof'
3. Managing: Achieving maximum value in practice and continually improving
Failure is not an option
Current challenges, and all the strategic questions they bring with them, represent the greatest challenge for mental health care institutions in coming years. What do we actually deliver? What do we do well (and what do we do badly)? What do we do in-house and what should we contract out? What is our position in the health care chain? Should we get rid of our facilities? Do we aim for scale, alliances, cooperation across sector boundaries or should we go for a niche instead? What staff and managers, skills and behavior do we need? If you get this right, quality care and financial return will automatically follow. But if you make the wrong choices, increasingly you may find that there’s no safety net to break your fall.
Creative destruction
Putting something better in place usually means existing systems have to make way (‘creative destruction’). This is certainly true when it comes to fundamental choices of the types described above. The consequences of this reorganization will become increasingly apparent in the coming years. Consider, for example:
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Merged institutions that in reality split out into separate organizations again.
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Deliberate decisions to stop supplying a significant part of the total patient care needs (specialization).
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Bridging or breaking down boundaries between hospitals, primary care, nursing and home care, care for the disabled and education.
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Directors, supervisors, managers, treatment professionals and other staff that are challenged to keep up with the required changes in skills and culture.
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Steady increase in the influence of the Dutch Competition Authority (NMa) and the Dutch Health Care Authority (NZa) (who operate in a difficult environment of national chains, supra-regional merged organizations with local bases, inter-sector alliances and a patient population that exhibits great diversity when it comes to the desire and ability to make choices)
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All these developments have one thing in common: moving forward means saying farewell to the mental health care sector as we currently know it. Who’s prepared to give it a go? We’ll be happy to talk it through with you!
Want to know more?Contact Joost Kruytzer:
T +31 (0)20 3010800
E kruytzer.joost@kpmgplexus.nl