"Controlling is my topic!" This was how Beyza Bucak opened her guest lecture on "Controlling in the healthcare group" at HWG Ludwigshafen last week. And the best part: at the end of the lecture, all the students who attended agreed that controlling is a highly attractive career field. Bucak is a Management Board Officer at AGAPLESIOM gAG and previously worked in Group Controlling there. As a graduate of the university, she was delighted to be invited by Prof. Dr. Eveline Häusler to work on the topic together with students of health economics degree programs.
Following a presentation of AGAPLESION's business areas, which include hospitals, residential and care facilities, MVZs and service & logistics, Beyza Bucak discussed current reforms that are relevant to hospitals' revenues: Retention budgets, service group-based capacity planning by the federal states and the associated quality criteria. Subsequently, the complex requirements for planning, management and control of costs and revenues of hospitals were derived very clearly. The explanations on strategic management processes at AGAPLESION were particularly instructive.
For the interactive part of the event, Beyza Bucak had prepared pseudonymized annual financial statement data of a group-affiliated hospital for the years 2021-2024 and formulated challenging tasks: As part of due diligence, the students assessed the economic situation of the hospital in groups and were ultimately asked to make a recommendation for or against the purchase of the hospital. Based on the analysis, each group had to formulate three questions for the management of the hospital being considered for acquisition, which turned out to be a real challenge. The intensive discussions that Ms. Bucak held with the individual teams were particularly valuable for the results of the working groups.
Luis Terodde, a student on the GiP degree programs, emphasized that "the lecture provided valuable professional insights and also offered orientation and motivation for students who are interested in working at the interface between economics and healthcare. Ms. Bucak impressively showed us how varied career paths in the healthcare sector can be. This is of course particularly motivating, as she is also a health economist and completed her Master's degree at our university."
Thank you very much, Beyza Bucak, for the instructive lecture and the inspiring exchange!
