ECR 2006 President Professor Andy Adam (St Thomas’ Hospital, Department of Radiology, London, UK) welcomes all articipants
The 3rd Hospital Administrator Forum
I am delighted that the Hospital Administrator Symposium organised by European Hospital is being held in conjunction with the ECR again this year.
The efficient delivery of healthcare is a task that challenges governments all over the world. Most doctors see medicine as primarily an interaction between the doctor and patient; so do most patients. However, modern healthcare is expensive, fiendishly difficult in terms of logistics, and intertwined with local and national politics.
Senior hospital managers have to walk the tightrope between the doctors’ individual patient-focused approach and the politicians’ obsession with newspaper headlines, trying to ensure that the population that their hospital serves gets a fair deal.
Radiology is already important in your calculations partly because of the heavy capital expenditure in radiology departments and the ever-increasing need for sophisticated information technology. The importance of radiology will be even greater in the future due to astonishing advances in medical imaging.
I hope that this symposium will enable you to assess trends in modern radiology and to try to anticipate how they will impact on what you do. Your skills play a vital part in the success of modern medicine and we greatly welcome your presence here. I hope you will enjoy the ECR!
This article was published on 03/01/2006