Integrated public town hospitals

Hospitals and the public interest.

Capital investment in public hospitals.

Capital investment is a major concern for public hospitals. Relative to operating expenditures, it has been almost constant for 40 years, despite great changes in technology and patient throughputs. Research studies during the last decade suggest that over that time almost all investment has been on simply replacing existing assets. Per person, the total capital stock has actually declined. How...

Public-private partnerships for hospitals.

While some forms of public-private partnerships are a feature of hospital construction and operation in all countries with mixed economies, there is increasing interest in a model in which a public authority contracts with a private company to design, build and operate an entire hospital. Drawing on the experience of countries such as Australia, Spain, and the United Kingdom, this paper reviews...

New Public Management and the Corporatization of Portuguese Public Hospitals

This paper reports an in-depth and longitudinal case study on the new public management (NPM) reforms introduced in Portuguese public hospitals throughout the 2000s. The objectives of the investigation were twofold: firstly, it sought to analyse the role of accounting technologies and market-based mechanisms in the NPM reforms introduced in the sector when compared with other cases of NPM imple...

Soft Budget Constraints in Public Hospitals.

A soft budget constraint arises when a government is unable to commit to not 'bailout' a public hospital if the public hospital exhausts its budget before the end of the budget period. It is shown that if the political costs of a 'bailout' are relatively small, then the public hospital exhausts the welfare-maximising budget before the end of the budget period and a 'bailout' occurs. In anticipa...