MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES AND LESSONS LEARNT IN THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM GENERATED BY THE PANDEMIC GLOBAL CRISIS

Purpose – We present the most important lessons learnt regarding managerial activity hospitals during the global healthcare crisis of 2020.

Methodology – We conducted extensive interviews with hospital managers or key persons with wide decisional involvement in health institutions in Romania who were directly involved in their role during the first four months of the pandemic crisis generated by COVID-19.

Findings - As we are facing a global healthcare crisis, the lessons we present from hospitals from Romania can be compared with lessons from other countries and the learnings should prepare the healthcare system for a better response in future.

Research limitations– We conducted the interviews in medical institutions from major cities in Romania, as the general procedure in the first stage of the pandemic consisted in transferring positive patients into the regional special equipped COVID-19 hospitals, also called first line hospitals. We mention the fact, that we also conducted interviews in hospitals that were not COVID-19 hospitals, but they had to operate as usual because of specific emergencies and both staff and patients were also exposed to the virus and could become source of spreading.

Practical implications – the conclusions we present should be taken into consideration by risk management specialists and all the persons acting in the managerial process of medical institutions.

Originality – the learnings and conclusions come from key persons directly involved in managing challenges on a scale that has never seen before in the medical system. By combining expertise from different fields like medicine, management, teaching, research, development and production, we organized the study by specific criteria in order to obtain valuable results. Some of the authors were also involved in the first line during the COVID-19 crisis.