Facts and Figures from the German Health Care System
What it’s all about
With the help of practice management business comparisons, it is not only possible to determine the strengths, weaknesses, threats, opportunities and possibilities for improvement for individual businesses, but also to examine practice management in specialist groups, among other things, in cross-sectional analyses.
How the farm comparison works
The practice management comparison condenses the circumstances of the management of a medical practice using key performance indicators (KPI). These are key performance indicators („laboratory values of practice management“) that compare the practice management data of a medical practice with objective and representative measured variables (benchmarking). For this purpose, with the help of structured analysis forms (doctor, MFA, patients, referrers, if applicable), the design of the practice management is first described and made measurable in the later evaluation by means of scaling. In this way, it is not only possible to record the type and intensity of the regulations used for practice management, but also their effects.
Findings on the specialist group „orthopaedic surgeons
One benchmarking parameter is the best practice standard. It describes all regulations, instruments and behaviours that are necessary for a smoothly functioning practice, even under changing demands. The factsheet shows the key performance indicators for the specialist group of orthopaedic surgeons. This shows, among other things, that in practices of this speciality group
- 43% of the best practice standard is not used, which means that the practices are working far below what is necessary. The value also explains why work overload, stress and demotivation at work are daily reality in many practices and why the quality of patient care is lower than possible,
- efficiency and productivity can be increased significantly, i.e. the workload could be managed with much less effort,
- about 25% of staff activities are of no benefit due to misalignments and are a waste of time
- purpose groups instead of teams work, as the teamwork quality is only 34%, which means that work performance is often characterised by „service by the book“ and „lone wolf“ behaviour,
What about ROM?
An important KPI is the „Return on Management (ROM)“ with its various options. It shows the impact success achieved with practice management.
The Total Return on Management (TROM) of a practice shows the effect of practice management on patient care. For this purpose, the aggregated Best Practice Score (BPS) is set in relation to the Patient Care Quality Score (PCQS, patient satisfaction in relation to requirements):
- a TROM score smaller than 1 indicates only a below-average practice management effect, in which case there is an acute need for action; this scenario applies to the specialist group of orthopaedic surgeons on average,
- a score greater than 1 indicates a disproportionate effect and it can be examined whether the commitment in sub-areas can possibly be slightly reduced in order to free up resources for other uses,
- If the score is 1, any intensification / weakening of practice management leads to linear reactions in the quality of care.
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