Critical Challenges For Health Care Reform In Europe

This volume explores the central issues driving the present process of healthcare reform in Europe. 17 chapters written by scholars and policy makers from all parts of Europe draw together the available evidence from epidemiology and public health, economics, public policy, organizational behaviour and management theory as well as real world policy making experience, laying out the options that health sector decision-makers confront. Through its cross-disciplinary, cross-national approach, the book highlights the underlying trends that now influence health policy formulation across Europe. An authoritative introduction provides a broad synthesis of present trends and strategies in European health policy.

The Regional Office for Europe has commissioned a study on recent experience in health care reform in the European Region. The study has been structured as an analysis of critical challenges that confront national health policy decision-makkers in the second half of the 1990s. This document summarizes key conclusions from the study. Taken as a whole, the evidence presented in the papers commissioned for the WHO study, presented in the forthcoming Regional office publication, suggests three key dimensions for analysing health sector reform: the pressures for reform, the strategies for policy intervention, and the process of implementation. The main conclusions of the study in each of these dimensions are reviewed in the following sections.

The nations of the EU have long led the world in universal health coverage. Recent economic developments have created problems ranging from inequities of care to growing numbers of uninsured — a progression analyzed by Win de Gooijer in Trends in EU Health Care Systems. His ideas may be startling, and the book is bound to be controversial. This is critical reading for health care managers and policymakers, politicians and insurors - anyone looking to Europe to understand this far-reaching evolution.

Health constitutes a core element of welfare states and a vital nerve in the trust relation between citizen and their governments. Focusing on the health sector, this book analyzes the closely interwoven relationship between the European Union and Member States. The authors explore the dynamic and multi-fold process of de-nationalizing health policies and illustrate how European policies develop in a sector that still appears to be under exclusively national competence. They describe the multiple forms and ways the Europeanization process takes, driven by market integration, public health crises and politics of consumer protection. The authors also provide a detailed analysis of key topics: the pharmaceutical sector, market regulation of medical goods and devices, food safety, the blood provision and plasma industry, European politics on bioethics, and risk reduction in the field of drug abuse. Providing a comprehensive and informed assessment of the Europeanization process in the field of health policies, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of health, European integration and policy-making.

This volume contains an Open Access Chapter - This book provides a comprehensive understanding of the sustainability of health systems in Europe. Furthermore, it includes an introduction on how EU action in supporting health- care policies in the EU Member States, both looking at implemented actions and describing current priorities for the future.

In the last 40 years the health of Europeans overall has improved markedly yet progress has been very uneven from country to country. Successes and Failures of Health Policy in Europe considers the impact health policy has had on population health in Europe. It asks key questions about mortality trends and health policy activity, such as: Do between-country differences in rates of smoking-related diseases reflect differences in tobacco-control policies? What would be a country's health gain if it implemented the policies of the best-performing country? Which social, economic and political factors influence a country's success in health policy? This book fills an important gap by offering a comparative analysis of the successes and failures of health policy in different European countries. In doing so it helps readers identify best practices in health improvement from which other countries can learn. The book explores how policy impact can be quantified and identifies which aspects of policy we can learn from when tackling the determinants of health in our populations. Written by experts and based on the latest evidence-based research, this volume is a must have for policy makers and those working in healthcare as professionals, researchers and students alike.

Health service human resources are key determinants of health service performance. The human resource is the largest and most expensive input into health care, yet it can be the most challenging to develop. This book examines some of the major challenges facing health care professions in Europe and the potential responses to these challenges. The book analyses how the current regulatory processes and practices related to key aspects of the management of the health professions may facilitate or inhibit the development of effective responses to challenges facing health care systems in Europe. The authors document how health care systems in Europe are confronting existing challenges in relation to the health workforce and identify the strategies that are likely to be most effective in optimizing the management of health professionals in the future. Human Resources for Health in Europe is key reading for health policy makers and postgraduates taking courses in health services management, health policy and health economics. It is also of interest to human resource professionals. Contributors: Carl Afford, Rita Baeten, James Buchan, Anna Dixon, Carl-Ardy Dubois, Sigrún Gunnarsdóttir, Elisabeth Kachur, Karl Krajic, Suszy Lessof, Ann Mahon, Alan Maynard, Martin McKee, Ellen Nolte, Anne Marie Rafferty, Charles Shaw, Bonnie Sibbald, Ruth Young.