FINANCE
Presented and organised by ECR 2009 and European Hospital
Financing strategies in hospital groups
Axel Paeger MD MBA MBI is CEO of Ameos AG, in Zurich, Switzerland. His experience in medicine and hospital management is extensive, in Europe and the USA.
When financing hospital technology, public funding is still the most frequently used instrument, he points out, but equity is becoming increasingly important, particularly where the investment might be recovered, at least partially, via charges. ‘The same holds true for debt, which currently has the advantage of being fairly cheap. Leasing is another option, which is gaining importance. While leasing relieves the balance sheet to a certain degree, leasing payments must be earned, just like interest or return on equity. Most decisions in favour of leasing are based on strategic considerations: since a hospital should concentrate on its core competency – patient care – it appears to make sense to enter into an operative leasing contract that allows the hospital to hand over all equipment management tasks to a partner. However, public hospitals in particular opt for this scenario for purely economic reasons: the leasing partner pays his staff much lower salaries and can thus offer the services at a better price than the in-house technology department.
01.03.2009
