Healthcare reform has been a constant phenomenon for the last two decades, regardless of being Bismarckian or Beveridgean. The launch of new reforms has increased in pace to a point that was defined, in a recent BMJ article on the UK National Health Service, as ‘constant redisorganisation’. Most of the policy analysis literature on healthcare reforms has been of Anglo-American origin. Consequen...

ever changing needs of society to which the health sector has to respond, makes the health sector reform inevitable for any country worldwide. increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of health services, equity, sustainable financing and management improvement are the main objectives of health sector reform. healthcare reform was set high on the new administration’s agenda with the start of ...

There are increasing criticisms of dominant models for scaling up health systems in developing countries and a recognition that approaches are needed that better take into account the complexity of health interventions. Since Reform and Opening in the late 1970s, Chinese government has managed complex, rapid and intersecting reforms across many policy areas. As with reforms in other policy area...

Editorial To achieve universal health insurance coverage, China has launched three phases of health care system reforms. The first round of reforms was embarked on in the mid-1980s with the introduction of market incentives. The second round began in 1997 with the introduction of the Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance (UEBMI) scheme which provided health insurance coverage to all urban work...

The consolidation of a universal health system coupled with a process of regional devolution characterise the institutional reforms of the National Health System (NHS) in Spain in the last two decades. However, scarce empirical evidence has been reported on the effects of changes in health inputs, outputs and outcomes, both at the country and at the regional level. This paper examines health ca...

This keynote paper examines how the development of integrated care in Finland has become a key aspect of health and welfare reforms in recent years. However, it poses questions as to whether future reforms to the Finnish system will continue to support care integration and outlines many of the key challenges faced in supporting such an agenda.

Why evaluate primary care? Although the strengthening of primary care services is a priority of health reforms in many countries throughout the WHO European Region, the backgrounds to and reasons for the reforms vary. In western Europe, emphasis on primary care is expected to provide an answer to rising costs and changing demand resulting from demographic and epidemiological trends. Central and...

Before its collapse, Kosovo's healthcare system was an integrated part of the Former Yugoslav Republics System (known as relatively well advanced for its time). Standstill had begun in the last decade of the twentieth century as the result of political disintegration of the former state. The enthusiasm of the healthcare professionals and the people of Kosovo that at the end of the conflict heal...