Modern healthcare is at a crossroads in Europe. Current healthcare systems are built on care delivery models that do not meet today’s needs. Demographic changes are challenging governments and public officials, and place Europe’s ability to deliver sustainable and affordable care at risk. To survive and thrive, European healthcare must be redesigned to make care delivery more efficient, more effective, and more beneficial to patients. If not, systems may find themselves implementing care rationing or facing care shortages for all.
Across Europe, patients navigate complex care delivery systems that are in need of modernisation to provide optimised services. From long wait times to see specialists, rushed medical appointments to lack of follow-up care, the challenges are similar. Patients increasingly struggle with more than one chronic health issue and are likely to receive siloed care. The lack of coordination between the different specialists treating one patient can cause delays in correct diagnoses, resulting in poorly-managed conditions. Inefficient care delivery negatively impacts patient outcomes and costs healthcare systems a great deal of money.
In a context where both the economy and lack of available human resources place constraints on the way in which care is delivered, innovation is necessary. Countries must invest in solutions to rethink patient access and provide better value. Planning and forethought is necessary to generate new ideas that can then be tested in the field.
In Greece, a country struggling to allocate scarce health resources, this is precisely what the city of Patras is doing. Today, half of patients admitted into Patras’ hospitals come in under so-called “Emergency procedures” in hospitals. The system has no direct links between primary care physicians and hospital doctors: a total disconnect between two vital forms of healthcare. A new project aims to solve this problem by creating autonomous Emergency & Accident clinics, staffed with dedicated emergency medicine specialists. Beyond filling an essential gap in service for patients, autonomous E&A clinics could create serious cost savings for a country struggling to balance the books.