More and more countries are following the United States' lead and incorporating case-mix based payment or budgeting systems into their healthcare delivery model. Evaluating the impact of changing national healthcare systems is a difficult task, complicated by political and cultural issues. New systems must reflect current cultural and political realities, existing healthcare delivery models and the public’s expectations.
Nimitt Consulting helps governments around the world with the complicated process of implementing healthcare reform and communicating with key stakeholders as they change clinical and financial delivery models. As a senior technical advisor, Ms. Shah is currently working with the Turkish government through Hacettepe University Hospital and Tepe Technologies to pilot test the use of coding and classification tools to design a new payment methodology for all Turkish hospitals.
Previously Ms. Shah served as the project director of a large scale health reform initiative in Romania where she assisted the Romanian government to implement a Diagnosis-Related Group (DRG) based healthcare financing system. This project was jointly funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Ms. Shah has also worked extensively on health reform initiatives in several other Eastern European countries, including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria.
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Case Study: From July 2000 through June 2003, Ms. Shah assisted the Romanian Ministry of Health and Family, the National Health Insurance House, the College of Physicians, the Institute for Health Services Management, and the National Center for Health Statistics through a USAID and DHHS-funded project to implement a more equitable and transparent financing mechanism for the country's inpatient hospital services. Her efforts included serving as the U.S. project director
managing a team of local Romanian experts organized into functional
teams, including coding, costing, information systems, education,
communication, legislation, working to improve the healthcare
financing system. Her Romanian counterparts included physicians,
economists, public health specialists, and numerous officials from
the various Ministries and governmental agencies. The goal to shift all hospitals to the new output-based financing system continues. The outcome will be greater transparency in the healthcare sector, and decreased inefficiency and corruption. To learn more about the program, visit www.drg.ro. |
Key Services
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Managing projects and providing technical assistance on all aspects of health financing reform including implementation of case-mix principles
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Conducting health policy seminars with government officials
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Providing technical assistance and training on all aspects of implementing inpatient financing reform using various tools, including DRGs
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Facilitating strategic planning sessions and stakeholder meetings
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Developing and managing programs for USAID and World Bank initiatives related to health reform, financing, maternal and child health and others
