Hospital Rises to
the Challenge

Elke Frank always starts her day by look­ing at her phone. “The first thing I do when I get up is check my e-mail,” says the com­mer­cial direc­tor of Munich’s Rechts der Isar Hos­pi­tal. “Some­times I get a call in the mid­dle of the night,” she adds. That has been hap­pen­ing more often now since the out­break of the coro­navirus—for exam­ple, if a col­league from China offers to arrange a ship­ment of per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment. When Dr. Frank arrives at her office in a pre-war build­ing of the his­toric hos­pi­tal, she begins by check­ing in with other direc­tors and staff. “Right now, of course, our pri­or­i­ty is on deal­ing with the pan­dem­ic. But we’re also try­ing to main­tain a cer­tain sense of nor­mality, and our every­day work con­tin­ues as well.” 

With around forty clin­ics and depart­ments, this hos­pi­tal at the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich’s School of Med­i­cine is known as a supramaximal facil­i­ty—mean­ing it could han­dle a huge influx of patients in a short peri­od of time. Togeth­er with Munich’s other uni­ver­si­ty hos­pi­tal at Lud­wig Max­i­m­il­ian Uni­ver­sity (LMU), it treats around half of the Covid-19 patients in the state cap­i­tal of Bavaria, which has a pop­u­la­tion of near­ly one and a half mil­lion. “In addi­tion to our local patients, we take on very severe cases that small­er hos­pi­tals are gen­er­al­ly not equipped to han­dle,” says Frank, who has a busi­ness degree in addi­tion to a doc­tor­ate in biol­o­gy. The two uni­ver­si­ty hos­pi­tals also advise state min­istries and author­i­ties on health pol­i­cy mat­ters. Their medi­cal per­son­nel rou­tine­ly exchange infor­ma­tion about Covid-19 with col­leagues around the world. “We have close ties with Italy, Spain, and China, for exam­ple. The net­work of research projects that already exist­ed before the out­break has been help­ful in this regard.” 

The corona­virus has led to a tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of the usual eco­nom­ic mechanisms at hos­pi­tals. In mid-March 2020, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment ordered hos­pi­tals through­out Ger­many to post­pone elec­tive oper­a­tions and treat­ments. Other coun­tries have taken sim­i­lar actions, includ­ing Aus­tria, Switzer­land, and Spain, as well as parts of the U.S. The aim is to avoid run­ning out of resources to treat seri­ous­ly ill patients. But this also means that hos­pi­tals are los­ing an impor­tant source of rev­enue. Nev­er­the­less, bud­get issues are superseded by the imper­a­tive to con­trol the pan­dem­ic. “The state gov­ern­ment instruct­ed us to ensure suf­fi­cient treat­ment capac­i­ties under all cir­cum­stances,” says Frank. The hos­pi­tal had already made plans back in Feb­ru­ary to take steps such as increas­ing the num­ber of ICU beds. “If need­ed, we can crank up our capac­i­ties rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly,” she adds. 

That being said, the hos­pi­tal is not in the most advan­ta­geous posi­tion to han­dle the upcom­ing chal­lenges. “Dig­i­tal­iza­tion could be a big help to us—if we already had a state-of-the-art sys­tem in place,” says Frank. Yet she also notes that efforts to dig­i­tal­ize are gain­ing momen­tum. “To a cer­tain extent, Covid-19 is giv­ing us the impe­tus to catch up,” she remarks. Roman Hipp, the Senior Part­ner at Porsche Con­sult­ing in charge of the health sec­tor, views the Munich facil­i­ty as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of many large hos­pi­tals. “Trig­gered by the pan­dem­ic, hos­pi­tals are intro­duc­ing more dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies at faster rates in order to sup­port their per­son­nel and pro­vide the best pos­si­ble care for their patients. Those that had already insti­tut­ed smart strategies now have a clear head start,” he says. Anoth­er impor­tant task at present is to har­ness this momen­tum and build net­works. “Hos­pi­tals will not be able to advance dig­i­tal­ization on their own,” says Hipp. “To derive the great­est ben­e­fits from dig­i­tal ways of serv­ing patients, com­pa­nies in the med­ical tech­nol­o­gy and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tors will need to add their own exper­tise to the mix, as will start-ups and investors.” Special­ized future-ori­ent­ed con­fer­ences such as the Dig­i­tal Health Sum­mit at the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich are well suit­ed to forge con­nec­tions among key play­ers in the health­care field—with the shared aim of pro­mot­ing dig­i­tal inno­va­tions. 

At Rechts der Isar Hos­pi­tal, the extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances are prompt­ing changes not only in tech­nol­o­gy but also with respect to human resources. “Our employ­ees are help­ing out wher­ev­er they’re need­ed,” says the com­mer­cial direc­tor. This level of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary col­lab­o­ra­tion was hard­ly imag­in­able in the past. But Frank also notes that the response to the virus has revealed some weak­ness­es. For one thing, indi­vid­ual depart­ments at the hos­pi­tal still have dif­fer­ent process­es. That affects not only patient man­age­ment but also areas like sur­gi­cal process­es and ster­ile goods man­age­ment. “We’ll have to work togeth­er to stan­dard­ize our process­es in the future,” she says. Ini­tial steps have already been taken. In 2019, the hos­pi­tal worked togeth­er with Porsche Con­sult­ing to define man­age­ment guide­lines and to strate­gi­cal­ly realign com­mer­cial orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­tures. “The improved process­es are all the more help­ful to us right now,” says Frank. “Take the twen­ty-five process and trans­for­ma­tion facil­i­ta­tors who were trained over the course of those projects. Some of them are pro­vid­ing use­ful struc­tur­al rec­om­men­da­tions at our cri­sis man­age­ment ses­sions, which are lay­ing the best pos­si­ble ground­work for the deci­sions we need to make. That is of great help to the board of man­age­ment.”  

Dr. Frank is pleased to see the expres­sions of appre­ci­a­tion for hos­pi­tals and their employ­ees. “I hope it con­tin­ues, and also that every­one from cus­to­di­ans and clean­ing per­son­nel to front-line providers like nurs­ing teams and physi­cians regain a sharp­er aware­ness of their respec­tive roles. That could lead to a new view of health­care in gen­er­al.” For that to hap­pen, how­ev­er, all the health­care-relat­ed pro­fes­sions and occu­pa­tions would need to make use of the oppor­tu­ni­ties pro­vid­ed by this new level of appre­ci­a­tion. The com­mer­cial direc­tor has some doubts as to whether that will in fact occur. “How­ev­er, I do believe that this sit­u­a­tion will lead to some pos­i­tive devel­op­ments over­all for hos­pi­tals.”