title: Cardiac echo-lab productivity in times of economic austerity.
abstract: The present study attempts to offer insight into the volume, cost, and productivity of the operation of a cardiac echocardiographic laboratory (echo-lab) in a major public hospital of Greece and thus to contribute, on a practical level, to the widening of knowledge in the strategic field of secondary and tertiary healthcare management. The conducted research includes the basic step of the deployment of a primary data registry in the echo-lab and unfolds in three levels, i.e. the variability measurement of the quantity and cost of medical services provided to different patient populations, the assessment of operating costs and the development of productivity indexes. The results show that the mean costs of provision do change among distinct patient populations. The most important, from a financial standpoint, population cluster appears to be the one corresponding to outpatients. Productivity indices presented in this analysis constitute an essential piece of information which the public healthcare system is currently largely lacking, and which, combined with the pricing and the diagnosis-related group coding system of hospitals, can be used to improve efficiency in the management of secondary and tertiary care.
authors.affiliation: Cardiology Department, Hippokration Hospital, National Health System, Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Vasiliki K
authors.initials: VK
authors.lastname: Katsi
authors.affiliation: 1st Department of Cardiology, Hippokration Hospital, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Dimitrios A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Vrachatis
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Anastasia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Politi
authors.affiliation: Department of Social and Educational Policy, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Peloponnese, Corinth, Greece.
authors.forename: Manto
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Papageorgiou
authors.affiliation: Cardiology Department, Hippokration Hospital, National Health System, Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Anastasios
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Koumoulidis
authors.affiliation: Cardiology Department, Hippokration Hospital, National Health System, Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Ioannis
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Vlasseros
authors.affiliation: 1st Department of Cardiology, Hippokration Hospital, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Manolis
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vavuranakis
authors.affiliation: 1st Department of Cardiology, Hippokration Hospital, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Dimitrios
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tousoulis
authors.affiliation: 1st Department of Cardiology, Hippokration Hospital, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Christodoulos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Stefanadis
authors.affiliation: Cardiology Department, Hippokration Hospital, National Health System, Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Ioannis
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kallikazaros
authors.affiliation: Department of Social and Educational Policy, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Peloponnese, Corinth, Greece ; Centre for Health Services Research, Medical School, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Kyriakos
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Souliotis
keywords: Cost-effectiveness; Echocardiography; Greece; Health economics