Dr. Borbála Cseh

Dr. Borbála Cseh (b. 1975) is a healthcare manager, a doctor of health sciences, and the managing director of Med-Econ, an independent health-economics research and consulting firm. Her career spans from the bedside to system-level governance: over nearly three decades she has come to know healthcare from the perspectives of clinical practice, hospital ownership supervision, and professional and methodological development. Her professional focus is on healthcare management, primary-care and practice-community development, and nursing quality; she also publishes regularly and teaches at the University of Miskolc.

In her free time she is a keen sports enthusiast.

Early years and education

She began her career at the bedside: she qualified as a general nurse (1993), passed her adult specialist-nursing examination (1996), and then earned a graduate nursing degree at the Faculty of Health Sciences of Semmelweis University (2000).

From there she turned towards leadership and management. At the Health Services Management Training Centre of Semmelweis University she first qualified as a healthcare manager (2010) and then earned a master's degree (MSc) in healthcare management (with excellent distinction, 2017). She obtained her doctorate at the Doctoral School of Health Sciences of Semmelweis University (PhD, summa cum laude, 2024).

Career: from the bedside to system-level governance

Few healthcare leaders know the system this thoroughly from the ground up. Borbála Cseh has worked at every level.

Starting from practice. Between 1993 and 2000 she worked at Parádfürdő State Hospital, first as a specialist nurse and then as head nurse. She subsequently took part, as lead assistant of the dry carbon-dioxide bath (mofetta) in Mátraderecske, in the research work to have it certified as a therapeutic gas.

Ownership and system-level governance. Between 2001 and 2011, as healthcare officer of the Heves County Local Government, she was responsible for the professional supervision of the operation of the Markhot Ferenc Hospital in Eger. From 2011, as a healthcare specialist officer at the Central Hungary Regional Directorate of GYEMSZI and later ÁEEK, she coordinated the professional oversight, capacity management and ownership representation of more than a dozen hospitals in Budapest and Pest County, playing a key role in the 2011 nationalisation of hospitals.

Methodology and development. Between 2017 and 2020, in the primary-care development project (EFOP 1.8.0) of the National Public Health Institute and later the National Public Health Center, she worked on developing the professional and methodological framework and indicator system for practice communities. She took part in IFKA's D-Care Interreg international project (smart devices and innovations in elderly care) and in the professional coordination of the healthcare campus development at Széchenyi István University in Győr.

At the helm of Med-Econ. She joined Med-Econ as a senior professional expert in 2019, and has been the company's managing director since June 2020. Under her leadership the firm works on health technology assessment (HTA), the development of Hungarian and EU healthcare grant applications, the analysis of health-policy programmes, and healthcare business advisory.

Academic and teaching work

Borbála Cseh has been a master lecturer at the University of Miskolc since 2015, where she teaches graduate nurses (BSc), healthcare organisers (BSc), health-education teachers (MSc) and social workers (MSc), in subjects including nursing, healthcare management, project management, patient-pathway management and health-insurance systems. As an invited lecturer she also teaches health policy and healthcare financing in the pharmacist-residency and healthcare-management programmes of the University of Debrecen.

Her research centres on nursing quality, with particular emphasis on the prevention and treatment of pressure ulcers (decubitus), and on primary-care development. She is the author and co-author of numerous scientific publications in leading international and Hungarian peer-reviewed journals (International Wound Journal, Orvosi Hetilap, BMC Health Services Research, Frontiers in Public Health). She is a native Hungarian speaker and works at an intermediate level in English and German.

Personal mission

Borbála Cseh's career has been guided throughout by the search for innovative, forward-looking solutions that serve progress. Because she knows healthcare from the bedside to system-level governance, she can connect clinical reality with financing and management decisions. She looks for ways to make everyday care genuinely better through measurement, modern methodology and good leadership: so that professional development is not an end in itself, but serves the good of patients and providers alike.

Selected publications

(A representative selection; the full, current list is available in MTMT.)

• Organizational development and management factors involved in the prevention and effective therapy of pressure ulcers: the results of the national survey conducted among Hungarian public hospitals (International Wound Journal, 2024)
• A felfekvés (decubitus) ellátásának és megelőzésének szakmapolitikai megközelítése (Orvosi Hetilap, 2023)
• Challenges and opportunities for improvement in the management and financing system of Health Promotion Offices in Hungary (Frontiers in Public Health, 2023)
• The role of primary care during the pandemic: shared experiences from providers in five European countries (BMC Health Services Research, 2023)
• Roadmap for large-scale implementation of point-of-care testing in primary care in Central and Eastern European countries: the Hungarian experience (Primary Health Care Research and Development, 2022)