Bridging the gap between clinicians and health managers

This contribution is about bridging the gap between professionals and managers in health care: clinicians on the one hand and managers on the other hand. The paper looks at the problems along the road ahead: those that confront the governmental authorities and those that confront the health care sector. It identifies the driving forces that confront the health care sector and shows in what direction they are pushing management. Three steps are indicated to bridge the gap between clinicians and managers: (1) new discussion forums; (2) patient information systems; (3) communication tools. Operational Research can and should contribute. However, some shifts in emphasis are necessary. Three propositions are put forward: (1) Operational Research should infiltrate the discussion forums on health care; (2) Operational Research should orient itself to the ‘operationalisation’ of the thousands of basic concepts and indicators used in health care rather than to the formulation of models which take all these concepts and indicators for granted; (3) Operational Research can contribute by helping to master the voluminous data in sensible ways in order to arrive at information on health, health care and health care management … under any type of constraint, resource or otherwise. This information needs, however, to be communicated.