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The purpose of this study is to investigate the implementation of a novel organizational structure in a specialized hospital department. The key issue was to optimize the efficacy of the process “hospital treatment” in a patient‐oriented approach.

A new organizational concept, i.e. the Cologne Consultant Concept (CCC), was developed by and implemented at the Department of Neurology, Cologne University Hospital in August 2007. The outcome of this reorganization was evaluated via a number of critical performance parameters (effects on daily routines and performance data, feedback from quality control and house officers). Furthermore, the strengths and weaknesses of this novel system were compared to the traditional ward‐based system in Germany, the Anglo‐American consultant model and care provided by sub‐specialized teams.

The reorganization of the healthcare services by the CCC provided flexible medical care for inpatients. The independent assignment of patients to a ward, and to a team of physicians offered incentives for case‐oriented and efficient medical treatment. Importantly, the time‐consuming admission process could be distributed evenly between physicians in chronological order. Furthermore, beneficial effects on the department's overall performance compared to the traditional ward‐based system were observed.

The CCC constitutes a valuable new organizational structure that can provide medical care in any specialized hospital department.

Over the past two decades, four Uzbek historic cities and four “intangible cultural heritage” traditions have been raised to the World Heritage List. Yet none of these is in Karakalpakstan, and a painful disconnect appears between the zeal to protect the cultures and monuments of southern Uzbekistan and inaction in identifying and addressing the huge cultural as well as environmental losses most directly associated with the death of the Aral Sea. In this chapter, a U.S.-based cultural historian and conservation-preservation practitioner offers impressions and cultural and spatial material analysis of some of the historic places included on a recent study team tour of Uzbekistan to explore the impacts of the Aral Sea disaster. It is apparent that three-term president Islam Karimov has made culture a linchpin of his program of Uzbek growth and security, cultivated a higher and higher profile for his regime within UNESCO, and focused intensely on interpretation and material conservation of historic sites favoring the themes of his own regime. The focus of this chapter is the disconnect between the emerging national and achieved Aral Sea narratives.