Strategic role of a flag hospital in a large healthcare network

The Gruppo Villa Maria Care & Research (GVM c & r), a network of >30 hospitals spread across 4 different countries in Europe, represents a major player in the setting of healthcare providers. Identifying a hospital to represent the philosophy of care and management of the Group (a ‘flag’ hospital) in the national and international scenario is a strategic decision taken at top management level. The need to adapt to a healthcare ecosystem that increasingly puts priority on better health outcomes and effective cost-containment calls for a change in the models of care management and a different relationship with the Medtech industry in order to find a sustainable way to keep up with innovation.

The role of Flag Hospital in the context of GVM c & r is to be the Centre where standards of processing, production, and expected outcome are defined, and where models for providing better care to the patients are constantly pursued. Access to innovation is obtained by building a partnership with the Medtech industry, based not on the traditional market access model with its commercial and marketing focus, but whose focus is to demonstrate improved health outcomes at a reasonable cost. These models of management, once elaborated and once the clinical and economic results have been verified, can be exported to the other hospitals of the GVM c & r with small adjustments to optimize the overall clinical management.

In our vision, the Flag Hospital is the laboratory where the owners, management, and medical staff are jointly working to build a top-level hospital that is sufficiently flexible to allow adaptation of the structure, management and clinical activity to the changes taking place in the healthcare system, maintaining a high level of patient care and at the same time being attractive to Medtech Industry as a site for collaboration for innovation.

To become well recognized as a leading hospital, work volume and clinical results in themselves are not sufficient unless backed up by a strong scientific program. This philosophy is an intrinsic part of the Flag Hospital profile. A strong scientific program has been implemented, both to get the everyday clinical activity of the hospital involved in the production of structured experiences and novel insights (adopting the comparative effectiveness approach), and promoting new basic and clinical research activities (i.e. genetics and reparative medicine). We strongly believe that optimal clinical results cannot be achieved unless associated with clinical research involving the medical and nursing staff. To this end, a formally structured Research Unit is active in the Hospital which interacts closely with the clinical health workers.

Today Maria Cecilia Hospital is the Flag Hospital of the GVM c & r. The hospital has recently been renovated to make it technologically and structurally adequate for this role within the GVM c & r, with the medical staff and management deeply involved in both clinical and research programs to meet the requirements that a Flag Hospital must comply with.