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Eleonora Varntoumian: Delivering a speech at the WHO Athens Office on Quality of Care and Patient Safety

Eleonora Varntoumian/LinkedIn

Jan 20, 2025, 19:57

Eleonora Varntoumian: Delivering a speech at the WHO Athens Office on Quality of Care and Patient Safety

Eleonora Varntoumian, Policy Manager at EHMA (European Health Management Association), shared a post on LinkedIn:

“I was honored to be invited by JOAO BREDA and his team at the World Health Organization(WHO) Athens Office on Quality of Care and Patient Safety to deliver a keynote speech on ‘Gathering Stakeholders to Shape the Future of Quality of Care: Challenges and Opportunities’ during the 2nd Meeting of the Minds on Quality of Care in Athens.

It was a privilege to share real-life examples from the EHMA – European Health Management Association and highlight how collaborative efforts can drive meaningful change in healthcare systems.

This experience reminded me how essential it is to bring people together – across sectors, disciplines, and perspectives – to shape better, more sustainable hashtag#healthcare systems. Engaging stakeholders isn’t always easy, but it’s absolutely worth the effort.

Some challenges we face when engaging stakeholders include:

Conflicts of interest create challenges in reaching consensus, aligning on common objectives, and developing unified strategies or initiatives, as stakeholders often struggle to balance competing needs like cost-effectiveness and patient-centered care.

Political and organisational barriers arise from unclear expectations, misaligned priorities, silos, hierarchical structures, leadership or staff turnover, and insufficient follow-up, all of which hinder collaboration and trust.

Resistance to change in healthcare is the reluctance of stakeholders – such as healthcare providers, patients, and policymakers – to adopt new practices, technologies, or processes due to fear of the unknown, comfort with the status quo, lack of awareness or skills, ineffective communication, and cultural or organisational barriers.

Hospitals struggle to balance competing priorities like daily operations, equipment upgrades, and patient care funding, making resource allocation tough.

How do we address these?

Despite these hurdles, I emphasised the importance of having a clear stakeholder engagement strategy: identifying the right stakeholders, building transparent communication, and fostering long-term partnerships. Collaboration remains the cornerstone of any effort to improve the quality of care globally.

To address these challenges, hospitals should develop a clear digital strategy with phased implementation to minimise financial strain. Engaging leadership with cost-benefit analyses, training staff, exploring external funding, and applying a change management approach will ensure smooth adoption while tracking and sharing the impact of investments to demonstrate long-term value.

As Dale Carnegie said, ‘The only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.’ By understanding and addressing the needs of diverse stakeholders, we can make meaningful progress towards UHC and improve the quality of care for all. Let’s continue working towards this goal.”

Eleonora Varntoumian: Delivering a speech at the WHO Athens Office on Quality of Care and Patient Safety