DGAP-News

RHÖN-KLINIKUM AG: Interim Report for the First Six Months of 2017 - Seite 2

 

Improved Operative Performance

Raising profitability has the highest priority for the Company. A significant contribution is made here by the agreement in separate accounting which the Federal State of Hesse and the two universities in Giessen and Marburg achieved in May 2017. "The agreement is a ground-breaking success. We create both legal and investment certainty for our two largest sites which will not only affect the medical capability of both university hospitals and therefore benefit our patients but will also have a marked improvement in our operative results and will thus secure the existing jobs at UKGM," CEO Stephan Holzinger stated.

Specific measures to raise profitability have also been commenced at a group level: "We are improving our cooperation with the Medical Review Board of the Statutory Health Insurance Funds (Medizinischer Dienst der Krankenversicherungen - MDK) to reduce bad debts, reviewing and improving maintenance and service agreements and establishing effective personnel controlling to deploy our employees in the best possible manner and to be able to exploit better the resources available to us," Holzinger continued. In the medium term the Company will establish a treatment strategy for all sites and assess the medical performance of each hospital in order to develop individual tailor-made medical services for the respective patient structure. This will place each hospital in a better position on the market as well as reduce duplicate services.

 

Focus on Campus Concept and Digitalisation

"RHÖN-KLINIKUM AG faces challenging tasks: apart from improving the operative performance of the corporate group we must also take the opportunity which medical digitalisation offers," Holzinger stated. "We are convinced that we have the right strategy with our campus concept which will link the different medical services across all the various sectors. With our campus concept we are a pioneer in providing modern and high-quality healthcare in rural areas." Digitalisation will play a central role here. Already today many processes in our hospital group are linked by innovative IT technology, such as WebEPA⁺, our system for electronic patient records; physicians and therapists are connected in the treatment process by our IT system. The use of cognitive IT solutions will significantly grow in importance. The hospital group is taking account of these challenges and staking its leadership claim by setting up a new position for "Digital Transformation".