Austria Cost Of Care Case Study

Certain hospitals throughout Austria will specialize in specific care much like here in the states. We were able to visit the catholic monastery hospital Barmherzige Bruder in Salzburg. Here we heard from the nursing director Margareta Bruckner. She explained that this hospital specialized in oncology practices and therefore was able to maintain better technology for that special service, however, if a patient needed more efficient services for cardiology, they would better be serviced by the university hospital that was larger and received more money from the social insurance because it was more regulated by the government. This appeared to be more of an issue in this country that in the US. In the US, we have more specialized services that are within the systems of care and the technology here appears to be light years ahead of Austria. This is simply because the cost of care in the US is astronomically higher than most countries.

Here in the US, most of the hospitals and hospital systems are made of several C-Suite executives that oversee various areas of each system. The interesting part of the administrative makeup of the hospitals in Austria is that it is made of a threefold upper executive chamber. This included the CEO who oversees the everyday business of the system, the medical director who oversees the physicians and provider practices and the nursing director who oversees the nurses and nursing practices. The 3 executives must work together and come to the agreed solution on any issues that arise for their particular hospital. The makeup of this allows them to have a deciding vote in the event of a dispute that needs to be settled in a fair