[Clinical management. Clinical management units. Management agreements]

Clinical management (CM) as a concept includes different innovating experiences in health care services management among developed countries, which were initiated during the late eighties and the first nineties. They were mostly due to the concern that political leaders had about their financial viability. CM, as far as it is understood in Spain, is an organizing model which considers the patient as the centre of the health system. It is guided towards disease, looking for continuous assistance and facilitates an autonomous management together with decentralization at the time of taking decisions. It involves professionals whose clinical practice, based on guides, medical records and care planning, incorporate the knowledge and methodology of "evidence based medicine". Clinical management units (CMU) are organizational types of CM, which implantation is spreading rapidly in the different national health care systems. They include a person who assumes responsibility for them, who act as the hospital directorship interlocutor and are autonomous at the time of managing the allocated resources related to their medical programmes and services. They have an information system adapted to their own needs and an outcome evaluation system which allows them "process" re-engineering. CMU's strengths and weaknesses are highly dependent on the professionals that integrate them. The CMU responsible carries out a management contract with the hospital directorship in which CMU competences, directorship's obligations, essential aspects to meet agreed goals, an outcome evaluation system and an incentives scheme are included.