Express authorization of medicines, a double-edged sword

Cristina Roure

The approval of Aducanumab by accelerated route, by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for the treatment of Alzheimer's has been carried out against the unanimous opinion of its Advisory Committee on this matter, which has raised enormous dust. It is the first drug that attacks a supposed cause of the disease instead of its symptoms and has generated great expectations in a therapeutic area in which the gap is notable.

Digital health: about the inequality of the elderly

Marco Inzitari
 

"The prioritization of care for COVID-19 changed the doctor-patient relationship reducing scheduled face-to-face visits for the detection and monitoring of chronic diseases, of almost 41%. To return to pre-pandemic levels of diagnosis and management of chronic diseases, primary health care services would have to reorganize themselves and carry out specific actions for the groups at greatest risk. I quote verbatim an interesting recent article by the group of Dr. Antoni Sisó, current president of the Catalan Society of Family and Community Medicine (CAMFiC) and an outstanding researcher.

From our trench

Soledad Delgado
 

Shoulder Arms Charles Chaplin (1918)

From our trench, everything looked different. Time seemed to have stopped and each day was the same as the previous one. Same path, same faces, the same ritual of preparation to fight an enemy advancing in waves. The pandemic filled everything, to such an extent that we stopped seeing that life continued its course and that other diseases continued their course, seemingly unchecked, appearing before us when, sometimes, it was already too late.

Transforming our health system requires continuity and coherence

Nacho Vallejo
Atenció integral 

Photo of Alexas. Photos in Pexels

“Transforming health care requires continuity and consistency.” This is the title of a Harvard Business Review article written by Mark Britnell. Dr. Britnell is an executive of KPMG International and a global health systems expert. He dedicated his professional life to this field and has worked in more than 80 countries, a circumstance that has allowed him to gain first-hand unique experience of healthcare models. In 2000 he was appointed chief executive of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust where he was responsible for the design of the largest NHS hospital. He is also the author of the book In Search of the Perfect Health System.

Healthcare must be imbued with value

Paco Miralles
 

The 22nd National Congress of Hospitals and Health Management featured an organizational success that augurs a certain post-pandemic "normalization"; many congressmen and a program with a significant presence of value-based medicine. I take this opportunity to congratulate the organizing committee for the great work done.

Much has been said about the paradigm shift in the healthcare system, about the need to do things differently, about value as a solution for humanization, for the cohesion of professionals, for the alignment of funders and providers, and for the sustainability of a system in which without value everything is much more expensive.

Medical services, an anachronism

Jordi Varela
Editor

 

@varelalaf

Clayton Christensen says that if you want to be efficient, you have to offer services as close as possible to where the need arises. Michael Porter and Thomas Lee, for their part, defend the creation of Integrated Practice Units (IPU), while those of Corporate Rebels affirm that attractive projects are made because of the commitment of professionals and not because of the hierarchical command structure. This post is contrary to the status quo of hospital organization charts and, for this reason, I have chosen these three references that, from various perspectives, direct us against centralism, corporatism, and the hierarchy that current medical services give off, anchored in a vision more typical of the last century than of the demanding complexity of today's health problems.

Improving organizations' culture; avoiding inertia

Nacho Vallejo
 

Image of Sasin Tipchai a Pixabay

The culture of a healthcare organization is still an abstract concept. It aims to incorporate unwritten rules, beliefs, or values workers share. It's the personality of the organization and, in institutions such as hospitals, it can even be different between services or professional categories, it can be linked to the baroque nature of our hierarchies and, above all, to the traditional one: "Here it has always been done that way."