“Quality in healthcare is no coincidence – it is the result of good collaboration.”
This idea has accompanied me for many years. It describes less a goal and more an approach: Sustainable healthcare is created where people, competencies, and perspectives work together meaningfully.
My path into healthcare was not clearly defined from the beginning. After graduating from high school, I knew I wanted to study something in natural sciences, but not exactly what. Internships in a geriatric clinic and at my uncle’s pharmacy shaped my decision. Pharmacy was the closest to chemistry – and therefore exactly the right field for my interests. I studied pharmacy in Vienna and quickly developed a passion for pharmaceutical chemistry. My diploma thesis in morphine chemistry was awarded as the best work of the year by the Austrian Pharmaceutical Society – a great motivation to pursue a doctorate as well. Professional positions in Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and the USA followed – from community pharmacy to research and collaboration with patent attorneys in oncology research. These different perspectives have profoundly shaped my understanding of healthcare.
Focus on the Individual – Not the System
A particularly formative moment was my involvement in an expert report on the National Strategy for the Prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD). As part of the editorial team, we succeeded in consistently focusing on the individual – not on individual service providers or professional groups. The central question was: What does the individual need – and who has the competence to provide the best possible support? This change of perspective remains crucial for me to this day. Interprofessional collaboration is not an add-on, but a prerequisite for quality. Or as an African proverb puts it: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. In my leadership roles – including at the Swiss Pharmacists’ Association pharmaSuisse and later as managing director of the QualiCCare association – I experienced the immense potential of genuine collaboration. When strengths are fostered, responsibility is shared, and common goals are pursued, sustainable solutions emerge.
Quality as a Continuous Process
With Czock Healthcare Consulting, I now support healthcare organizations with strategic, conceptual, and operational issues – from educational programs to project management and health policy statements. When I explain my work to someone outside of healthcare, I usually say: I help organizations develop their projects, educational programs, or strategic positions in a way that makes them effective and sustainable. For me, quality in healthcare specifically means: pragmatically implementing improvements. Regularly evaluating one’s own work. Learning from evidence and experience. And constantly asking how quality of life, autonomy, and security of care can be improved or maintained for individuals. Professionally, I am particularly passionate about interprofessional collaboration, prevention – especially through vaccination strategies – and topics such as the diabetic foot, which often receive too little attention. Not as isolated specialties, but as part of a larger whole. I feel that my work truly makes a difference when results are not only developed but actually applied and disseminated.
An Approach That Connects
In my work, ethics, loyalty, clarity, and transparency are particularly important to me – as is collaboration on an equal footing. I also persevere with complex or political issues. Resilience is just as important to me as the ambition to achieve the optimum for clients and patients. In the long term, I envision a healthcare system where interprofessional collaboration is a matter of course – so that people no longer have to explain their concerns multiple times, but are supported in a coordinated manner. I find balance in movement: dancing, in the mountains, in nature, or while traveling. Perhaps there is a parallel here to my work – in the interplay of structure and dynamics, analysis and humanity. I believe in solutions that connect people – and improve systems.