Interim Management

The multitude of necessary changes in hospitals has led many to establish Project Management Offices as organizational units or staff departments.

We distinguish between:
1. PMOs concerned with project controlling
2. PMOs concerned with project implementation

The former summarize the reports and status updates from project managers and report to the management. The latter take on the project management work and implement projects with the cooperation and assistance of operational colleagues and key performers.

Antegrad recommends the installation of a PMO according to the latter definition. Our key performers, knowledge holders, and doers in the hospital are all highly committed colleagues and are correspondingly busy with their core tasks. To give them project leadership “on the side” is asking too much and often overburdens these colleagues professionally, as project management is usually not among their core tasks. If, with this in mind, a “non-key performer” is made a project manager, they often fail to assert themselves in the hierarchical world of medicine and are not trained project managers themselves. Consequently, effective project management is very rarely possible in such cases.

Antegrad deploys project managers who – equipped with appropriate authority from management – gather the information, ideas, and facts from key performers needed to develop, conceptualize, and plan the project within time and budget.

Antegrad has:
– Organized a hospital relocation
– Been responsible for a project involving the complete replacement of all IT systems for a maximum care provider
– Led the tertiary care sector of a university hospital into an integrated entity
– Closed a hospital site
– Founded and fully utilized subsidiaries of a maximum care provider
– Built up an MVZ (Medical Care Center) group
– Closed subsidiaries of a maximum care provider and reassigned their tasks
– And much more

When a hospital faces economically difficult situations, the call for new management automatically arises. However, not many German hospital managers are capable of developing a hospital out of a difficult situation – fewer than there is demand for this service.

When an operator seeks a new manager, they look for:
– Implementation strength and development experience
– Communication and diplomatic skills in dealing with shareholders and the public
– Ideas and concepts for the future
– A “clean slate” (should not have been noticed before)
– The willingness to commit to the institution with body, soul, and family, and to relocate
– The willingness to work under conditions that are not very performance-dependent, but as low as possible – such that no desires arise from the majority of the supervisory board

This very often goes wrong in that the chosen candidate has neither the ideas nor the assertiveness to deviate by more than nuances from the existing and ruinous course.

However, adequate leadership is required, capable of truly initiating change, driving corporate development, and guiding the hospital through the three difficult years of development and realignment. Such a task requires a different type of manager temporarily than for the long-term evolutionary development of an institution.
Antegrad provides you with this management expertise through individual experienced managers and a team of experts to support them.

Antegrad has:
– Developed a maximum care hospital over a period of 3.5 years, significantly changed its portfolio, realigned its mentality forward, inspired employees for the new path, secured funding for a new building, and planned it. In short: made the hospital attractive and efficient in all areas.
– Realigned, reorganized, developed into partner structures, and focused on specialties a small hospital (150 beds) whose closure had already been decided and announced.
– And much more

It is sometimes surprising to see how few hospital groups recognize the advantages of being a group and implement group structures in their internal organization.

– Standards in processes, organization, contracts, products, etc.
– Reduction of all administrative and non-value-adding structures and processes
– Streamlining of committees and decision-making paths

In a group, and only in a group, can small and specialized hospitals be economically successful.

Antegrad…
• …analyzes the potential within the group and identifies all areas and structures that can be managed uniformly across the group or even centrally.
• …calculates the reorganization scenarios in terms of content, space, and finances
• …prepares the business plans for the transition and
• …implements the transition as a project manager or as a hospital group manager

Antegrad has:
– Led a group of 36 hospitals out of financial distress
– Developed the central concept for the operation of tertiary services for one of the largest private hospital groups
– Formed a group of 10 hospitals into a corporate entity
– Helped a region develop a cross-sectoral overall concept

Our hospital financing model has been revised since its introduction. It is clear that there are strengths in the system and significant weaknesses. The latter will lead to changes in the system or even a new systematic approach to financing healthcare services in the coming years.

Until then, in areas and regions where the financing system already sets conditions that do not truly allow for comprehensive population care, it is crucial to develop smart, modern concepts and coordinate them with the affected operators, districts, state governments, district associations, health insurance funds, etc.

In Germany, there are many areas with relatively low population density and rural structures, concerning both infrastructure and outpatient medical care. Operating a hospital in such regions is often not feasible from an economic, qualitative, or staffing perspective.

Consequently, concepts must be developed that
– on the one hand, ensure the provision of direct access to medical services for the local population,
– secure emergency care, alarms, transport, and initial treatment for these people,
– identify and organize pathways to specialized treatments
– can be staffed regionally and
– for which funding is available.

Antegrad develops modern care concepts, discusses them in the region, and seeks coordination. We also develop financing models and compile the overall concept. Ultimately, we assist with operational implementation.

In a rural region, Antegrad developed the model that is now being decided upon and implemented by politicians and providers, together with health insurance funds, district associations, and local district administrators, mayors, and citizen initiatives.