JEDDAH, 20 February 2005 — Advances in technology, especially in the fields of biotechnology and information technology have ushered in a new era of health care and this was the theme hammered home during one of the final session of the first day of the Jeddah Economic Forum at the Al-Qasr Hall.
The session entitled “Sustaining Growth in Health Care: Working with Other Industries” was moderated by Dr. Waleed Fitaihi, CEO of International Medical Center, and focused on how the health care industry is being influenced by the new advances in technology especially in biotech and infotech.
Fitaihi’s speech entitled “Why Return On Individuals” began the session and it emphasized that focusing on one’s resources would help bring the greatest return.
Fitaihi stated that the company’s asset was its human resources and the stupendous growth in information systems should give the company CEO, COO and CFO the return of every individual in the organization in matter of seconds.
Fitaihi also said that society’s primary source of wealth is its human capital. He said (60 percent - 70 percent) of most firms’ expenditures are now labor related and called for an establishment of a link between personal investment and business performance.
He said right tools were needed to accurately measure the effect of human capital investment on business successes. Fitaihi also added that GTE’s metrics show that every 1 percent improvement in employee engagement boosts customer satisfaction by 0.5 percent.
Fitaihi gave Disney’s experience as an example of a company who improved an intangible asset’s strategic readiness.
“Disney invested in people who swept the amusement parks by training them to function as listening posts. This extra training helped them to gather first hand intelligence about guests’ experience,” said Fitaihi.
“By that you increase the ability to contribute to the company’s goals,” said Fitaihi.
Dr. Wael Kaawach, member of International Medical Center board of directors, gave a presentation on “Success with Metrics” where he stated that in the 1970s and early 1980s Humana corporate office mandated several targets that the individual hospital CEO’s had to meet in order to get bonuses and stock. He said that the CEO’s had targets for budgets, census day volumes and profit margins.
“Because these goals were consistently met, Humana hospital administrators where known as the best paid administrators in the early 1980s, and in 1987, had many facilities in the 40 hospitals with the highest operating profit margins”, said Dr. Kaawach, who added that 17 were Humana facilities. Twenty-two of the remaining 23 hospital on the list were also investor-owned.
Dr. Kaawach said metrics provide significant value to any organization that uses them to set goals (peer group comparatives, trended values), create action plans to achieve the goals, implement the action plans, monitor the results of the implementation, communicate the results back to the affected, parties (feedback).
