Developing health administration education leaders: the ACEHSA Fellowship experience.

The ACEHSA Fellowship was initially established as a professional and leadership development activity for individuals from academic and professional backgrounds. The Fellow plays an integral and critical role in the accreditation process. This key role of the Fellow is presented from former and current perspectives. Also, this discussion revisits the analysis of the Fellowship experience from the original study conducted by Fine (1984) and draws comparisons with data from a current study. The results demonstrate similarities in the role over time. The Fellowship experience appears to have a direct and positive impact on the ability of individuals to personally network with other professionals, which facilitates the opportunity to acquire future leadership roles. The authors of this study served as Fellows from 1993-1994. During that time, Dr. Sobczak was honored as Senior Fellow for his contributions to the Commission.

Information technology and managed care.

Information processing in the managed care marketplace is becoming increasingly complicated and expensive. Managed care organizations are finding that the ability to process information effectively and efficiently is the only way to maintain a competitive edge. This article provides an overview of information needs and system requirements from the perspective of healthcare providers. It offers information about computer software, electronic data interchange and databases, as well as brief case reports on some of their uses.

Managing marketing's return in health care.

Marketing in the health care environment has seen dramatic changes in recent years that include greater emphasis on measuring effectiveness. This paper has presented a review of the phenomenon and has discussed methods to measure and monitor the performance of the marketing effort. Research has been suggested to measure this relationship as an initial step in this area.

Managing retrenchment in French public hospitals: philosophical and regulatory constraints.

The French hospital system is experiencing economic stresses similar to those experienced by US hospitals. Pressures for cost containment have occurred due to changes in health care funding. The public hospital system is facing unprecedented severe retrenchment. Innovative strategies for managing retrenchment have been restricted by regulatory and philosophical constraints. What is needed is to provide more autonomy for individual hospital managers together with greater accountability for achievement of results.

Improvement in drug utilization in an ambulatory care setting by the use of drug profiles for physicians.

The purpose of this study was to determine if the use of drug profiles could improve drug utilization in an ambulatory care setting. Four clinics were provided drug profiles on each patient for a 6- to 9-month period. Evaluation of drug utilization and physician response to using the profiles was performed. The data indicated that, after the profiles were introduced, there was a reduction in the total number of medications and duplications in a majority of patients studied. In addition, physician time spent in reviewing the drug history was significantly reduced. Overall, the physicians who were surveyed felt that the profile helped them and improved patient care. These data support the conclusions that the integration of drug profiles within an ambulatory care setting can improve patient care and help the hospital with large outpatient workloads to realize significant savings.