The European Health Management Association launched a “crisis questionnaire” with the aim to create better understanding of the impact that the financial crisis is having on health care. In particular we are seeking to understand at which tier of service (national, regional or organisational) these decisions are made, i.e. does each healthcare provider make the savings necessary to cope with the budgetary constraints based on their own understanding of the population needs or is there a (regional or national) policy framework to guide organisations and units, for example reducing the availability of some services or procedures.

To respond to the questionnaire, please click here for questions and guidelines. We encourage all EHMA members to participate to make findings and lessons as valuable as possible!

To see more content of the Newsletter please click here.

• How do you measure the success of a treatment?
• Do you try to reach agreement with your patients about what would constitute a successful
  outcome?
• Could a ‘tool’ that helps doctors and patients look at their goal in terms that go beyond the
  strictly medical, to incorporate wider aspects of living with cancer, help both sides feel they
  can achieve success even when there is no cure?

• Is the current drug development model broken?
• Can the drug development business model that gave us imatinib (Glivec) and trastuzumab
  (Herceptin) deliver effective treatments for more complex tumours?
• Will making sense of more complex tumours require putting much more data into the public
  domain – and can this be done without jeopardising the commercial sustainability of
  pharmaceutical companies?

• Could the rest of us learn something from the French approach to tackling
  cancer?
• And if so, what

• Could more consistent use of statistics that give absolute instead of (or as well as) relative
  risk/benefit help people make better sense of information about cancer?
• Is the medical community ever guilty of (mis)using statistics to grab attention, even though
  this may add to the widespread confusion about cancer?
• How can we do things better?

• Do your patients ever ask you if they may record the consultation so they can refer
  back to it later, or share it with others?
• Do you think any of them have ever recorded a consultation without telling you?
• Would it bother you if they did?

Sound scientific advice and expertise helping to make life healthier and safer for European citizens
By Paola Testori Coggi, Director-General for Health and Consumers, European Commission

When preparing its policy and proposals relating to consumer safety, public health and the environment, the Commission relies on independent Scientific Committees to provide it with sound scientific advice and to draw its attention to new and emerging problems. These opinions are vital for policy makers to ensure the highest level of health and environmental protection that European citizens expect from the European Union institutions.

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