The Corporate Leadership Council
The complexities of modern hospital management demand an ever-increasing awareness on the part of hospital decision-makers regarding the most up-to-date solutions available for the many challenges they face. In a complementary manner, the most advanced and innovative hospital suppliers can benefit greatly from an increased understanding of the needs of those decision-makers.
While episodic meetings and trade fairs afford an opportunity for exchanges between these groups, what IHF has in mind is to create an ongoing opportunity for discussions and joint projects in a neutral setting beyond the normal commercial context, offering a unique link between providers and clients at a very high level.
The International Hospital Federation wishes to establish an effective, ongoing interface between its members and the corporate sector. IHF is therefore instituting the Corporate Leadership Council (CLC) to provide a neutral platform for wide-ranging discussions and practical projects on the improvement of healthcare. In this manner, hospital decision-makers and industry partners can work together towards achieving a common goal: improving the health of society.
This neutral setting will allow stakeholders from widely different healthcare domains to meet regularly with hospital leaders to discuss issues of mutual concern and set up common projects. Dialogue between a highly select group of corporate leaders and IHF members will be complemented by discussions between the companies themselves, setting the stage for collaborative, practical responses to pressing tasks such as reducing threats to patient safety, improving patient access to care, minimizing material resource usage in hospitals, and improving the productivity of the health workforce through technology and process innovation, etc.. The originality and uniqueness of the approach of the Corporate Leadership Council lies in the fact that the membership itself will choose the direction for the club’s activities specific to health provision. The IHF Secretariat will coordinate the selected projects and activities and will act as a liaison between the corporate sector and IHF members.
The value of the Council is that it will allow corporations from a wide range of sectors to interact on a regular basis both among themselves and with international hospital decision-makers, to discuss overarching issues and to carryout projects that concern all parties and are beneficial to all. More specifically, the Corporate Leadership Council will enable the corporate sector to make a significant contribution to orienting health policies, to interact with IHF members, to build strong working relationships with corporations from a wide range of sectors and to create greater awareness of issues that are relevant to the corporate world. Moreover, the most advanced and innovative hospital suppliers can benefit greatly from an increased understanding of the needs of hospital decision-makers and so shape their offerings to the hospitals accordingly. In a complementary manner, hospital decision-makers will be able to be informed and have access to the most up-to-date solutions available for the many challenges they face. The outcomes of the Corporate Leadership Council include exploring areas through dialogue and carrying out practical projects together that have the common purpose of enhancing hospital performance and improving health care delivery worldwide.
The Corporate Leadership Council was launched on June 16, 2010. Since then, another meeting was held at the IHF headquarters with corporate and IHF members and the Council’s first project was defined. Please find below a brief outline for this project:.
Project outline:
Leading international corporations in the field of healthcare would assess the facilities, operations and efficiency processes of three hospitals located in different geographical areas (North America, Europe, and emerging world) and propose solutions that would enhance the hospital efficiency and productivity while improving patient safety.
Based on this assessment, each company using its field of expertise would then bring forward possible improvements that hospitals would make to enhance their performance and improve patient safety. More specifically, each corporate participant would evaluate the hospital and deliver a solution which outlines the changes and measure that would need to be implemented.
The assessments and solutions would be offered free of cost by the corporate members, but the implementation would be financed by the hospital. The project would be designed to be ‘cash neutral’ for hospitals, meaning that the savings made from the implementation of the proposed solution would finance the loan that the hospital would take to implement the solution.