Pro Tip: Learn how to use HBI Alerts to follow your favorite topics

Insurer

 

Netherlands moves to Mechanical Turk for homecare workers

The Netherlands is set to liberalise its health workforce, allowing self-employed carers and nurses to practice freely. The primary focus right now is on getting these independent healthcare workers into the homecare market: a €20 million fund has been established to be used by insurers to purchase their services. Patients will be free to identify and select qualified staff over the web, rather like Amazon's mechanical turk model. How will this affect incumbent homecare providers? How does the new system work? We investigate.

Interview: Craig McNally, Head of Strategy and European Operations, Ramsay Health Care

Include dividends and rises in share price, and since September 1997 Ramsay Health Care has delivered a 2,000% return to shareholders. The company's shares are riding high, while management is indicating possible further expansions into Europe. We talk to Craig McNally about business cycles in the UK and France, as well as learning about the Ramsay Way.

New draft law for Polish healthcare insurance

Together with the Ministry of Health, the national association of private health insurers in Poland has drafted a complete law which would massively increase the use of private healthcare insurance. What are its main provisions?

Who will get the €3bn surplus?

Which players in the German healthcare sector will benefit most from the €3bn net surplus held by the insurers? (Hint - it will be used to buy votes).

What insurers really think

Everyone, apart from its 60,000 well paid specialist doctors find the German healthcare system extraordinarily frustrating. But payors remain in a class of their own. A senior manager in one of the largest Krankenkasse told us what life was really like - in exchange for anonymity.

Interview: Nicky Lieberman, Head of Community Medicine, Clalit

Clalit, Israel’s largest HMO, claims to have cut the cost of treating diabetes by 40% per patient in the last 6-7 years. We talk to head of community medicine, Nicky Lieberman. Given that diabetes already swallows around a tenth of West European healthcare budgets, this is an extraordinary claim. And this is not some tiny pilot. Clalit has 14 hospitals, 1,400 community outpatient clinics and its own pharmacy and diagnostic networks serving 4 million members.

Interview: Erez Aloy, Co-CEO SHL Telehealth Medicine

SHL is one of the few telehealth companies to achieve tens of millions of euros of sales. Yet the Israeli company, listed on the Swiss stock exchange saw sales fall 19% to $42m with EBITDA down from $11.4m to $9.1m in 2011.  We talk to co-CEO Erez Alroy about why growth is so difficult, how SHL saves German insurers €5,000 a year per patient and how it sells individual subscriptions to Israelis....

Find Us