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De financiële leefbaarheid van een Belgisch acuut ziekenhuis onder BFM, nomenclatuurafdrachten en supplementen

1. Inleiding: leefbaarheid is geen eenvoudige “winst per dienst” Voor Belgische algemene ziekenhuizen bestaat er geen publiek, uniform en eenduidig boekhoudkundig klassement dat per acute dienst exact aangeeft wat “winstgevend” of “verlieslatend” is. Dat zou bovendien sterk verschillen per ziekenhuis, algemene en financiële regeling, kamerpolitiek, case-mix, schaalgrootte, conventiegraad, ligduur, personeelskost en interne kostenallocatie. De onderstaande indeling moet daarom gelezen worden als een financieringslogische en empirisch onderbouwde schematisering , niet als een universele winst-en-verliesrekening. De kern is dat Belgische ziekenhuizen in hoofdzaak worden gefinancierd via een complex duaal systeem : enerzijds het Budget van Financiële Middelen (BFM), dat vooral verpleegkundige, niet-medische en werkingskosten dekt; anderzijds medische honoraria, waarvan artsen een deel afdragen aan het ziekenhuis. In 2023 bestond de omzet van algemene ziekenhuizen volgens 'Naar een gez...
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Introducing AI, LLMs, and RPA in Belgian Hospitals: A Governance-Led Implementation Model

Abstract Introducing Artificial Intelligence (AI), Large Language Models (LLMs), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in a Belgian hospital should not be treated primarily as an IT procurement exercise. It is a clinical, legal, organizational, and ethical transformation. AI can support diagnosis, triage, logistics, population health, and administrative optimization; LLMs can assist with documentation, translation, summarization, coding, and knowledge retrieval; and RPA can automate repetitive digital workflows such as data entry, report routing, claims preparation, and system monitoring. In Belgium, however, implementation must be aligned with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, the European Health Data Space (EHDS) Regulation, Belgian health-data governance structures, and the hospital’s duty to preserve clinical safety, security and patient trust. The safest introduction model is therefore phased: establish governance, select low-risk hi...
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Patient-Based Costing, DRGs, EHR Design, Process Mining, and Clinical Terminologies in Acute Hospitals

Abstract In an acute hospital, Diagnosis-Related Groups (DRGs) and patient-based costing solve different, complementary problems. DRGs are a prospective payment and case-mix classification mechanism : they group inpatient episodes for reimbursement and resource allocation using coded diagnoses, procedures, severity, and other episode variables. Patient-based costing - especially Activity-Based Costing (ABC) and Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) - is an internal measurement method : it estimates the actual resources consumed by a given patient across the care cycle. The practical implication is that DRGs tell the hospital what it is likely to be paid, while patient-based costing tells the hospital what the case actually cost. An effective acute-hospital costing architecture therefore requires structured EHR data, reliable timestamps and event logs, linkage to HR/finance/supply systems, and a semantic layer that uses SNOMED CT and LOINC for point-of-care capture and WHO ICD-11 a...
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Patient-Based Costing in Belgian Hospitals: Building ABC and TDABC from MZG/RHM and FINHOSTA - To Be

Introduction Patient-based costing seeks to measure the cost of care at the level of the individual patient rather than by broad departmental or specialty averages. In methodological terms, activity-based costing (ABC) assigns costs to activities and then to cost objects through cost drivers, whereas time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) simplifies this logic by combining two core parameters: the cost of supplying resource capacity and the time required to perform the activities in the care process. In healthcare, TDABC has become especially relevant because it is explicitly tied to process mapping and the measurement of real care delivery across pathways. For Belgian hospitals, the policy relevance of patient-level costing is unusually high. Belgium still allocates a major part of hospital financing through an APR-DRG/SOI-based budget allocation whose weights are based on average length of stay (LOS) rather than cost weights. The Belgian Health Care Knowledge Centre (KCE) has...
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