How is healthcare provided in Europe?
Healthcare in Europe is provided through a wide range of different systems run at individual national levels. Most European countries have a system of tightly regulated, competing private health insurance companies, with government subsidies available for citizens who cannot afford coverage.
Why did the European Union fail in the healthcare system?
The Europeans focused strictly on medical protocols and technical expertise from the medical field. This caused a fundamental collapse of the healthcare system, needless deaths, and a misinformed and distrusting public that demanded more accountability from the European Union members, the government, and health professionals.
What is the European health insurance card (EHC)?
Many European countries (and all European Union countries) offer their citizens a European Health Insurance Card which, on a reciprocal basis, provides insurance for emergency medical treatment insurance when visiting other participating European countries. 5. 1. 6. 2. 11. 3. 12. 4. 13. 5.
Which organizations are involved in public health development in Europe?
Both the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe ( WHO/Europe) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control are involved in public health development in Europe. The European Union countries were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
What is a health system?
The health system is a fundamental building block of a country's social project. Approaches and strategies differ but some concepts such as Patient Centred Care (PCC) seem to be more and more popular nowadays as the customer centric advocated in the industry. The research has focused on this trend of PCC with several different definitions but without having a particular focus on the context of Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). The objective of this study is, through an extensive literature review, to analyze this concept, to unify the dimensions described by different authors, to define a concept that can be proposed to LMICs and to determine facilitating factors as well as obstacles for its implementation. Keywords: Conceptual model, Health system, Low and middle income countries (LMICs), Patient Centered Care
What is OOPP in healthcare?
This study investigates the outcomes out-of-pocket payments (OOPP) produce in terms of income-related disparities in unmet health needs (UHN) due to inability to pay and highlights the commodifying effect of OOPP in European healthcare systems. It merges micro data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey (EU-SILC) for 2005–2012, with macro data from the World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and World Health Organization (WHO). Our results show that, first, across all European countries and years under study, income determines whether a person reports an occasion within the last year where she needed medical treatment or examination but did not receive it due to inability to pay. Second, the more a country relies on OOPP as a means of healthcare financing, the higher the proportion of respondents who report UHN. Third, the share of OOPP amplifies the effect of income considerably. While the poorest decile has a 2 percentage points higher predicted probability of suffering from financially determined UHN than the richest decile in a country with relatively low OOPP (11% of total health expenditure), this difference soars up to 10 percentage points in a country with relatively high OOPP (25%).
How important is innovation in healthcare?
The importance of innovation in healthcare has increased within the last decades as challenges, like rising costs and an aging demographic, have to be solved . The degree of innovativeness in healthcare is strongly influenced by the National Health Innovation System, which as a sectoral innovation system encompasses a wide variety of actors and related knowledge. Despite the highly practical relevance of the topic, there are only a few studies that analyze innovation in healthcare on a national level. Thus, this study is a starting point and, building on the theoretical framework of national innovation systems, answers the following questions: “Can countries be grouped by their innovation output in healthcare and do those groups differ in factors describing the healthcare system? Do countries with strong national innovation systems also have strong national health innovation systems and vice versa?” We compare the healthcare innovation output of 30 OECD countries using a multi-indicator approach and categorize them into four distinct groups using cluster analysis. The cluster consisting of the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and Switzerland shows the highest innovation output measured in knowledge production and knowledge commercialization. Surprisingly, these countries, with the exception of Switzerland, only rank in the medium group when considering the entire national innovation system. Policymakers and researchers might be particularly interested in studying the healthcare systems of these countries.
How are differences in welfare attitudes of Eastern and Western Europeans explained?
Differences in welfare attitudes of Eastern and Western Europeans have often been explained in terms of legacies of communism. In this article, we explore evaluations of healthcare systems across European countries and argue that East–West differences in these evaluations are explained by differences in the current institutional design of healthcare systems in the two regions. The empirical analysis is based on the fourth round of the European Social Survey, applying multilevel and multilevel mediation analysis. Our results support the institutional explanation. Regional differences in healthcare evaluations are explained by institutional characteristics of the healthcare system, that is, lower financial resources, higher out-of-pocket payments, and lower supply of primary healthcare services in Eastern compared to Western European countries. We conclude that specific aspects of the current institutional design of healthcare systems are crucial for understanding East–West differences in healthcare evaluations and encourage research to further explore the relevance of institutions for differences in welfare state attitudes across socio-political contexts.
What are typologies in health care?
Typologies are a useful and widely employed instrument in comparative research, including the study of health care systems. This study analyses the effectiveness of extant classifications in representing health care systems globally, examining whether existing literature adequately helps to understand health care systems of the Global South. To this end, the study highlights key elements of health care systems in the Global South, in particular limited resources, segmentation and the involvement of non-domestic/international actors. In a further step, we conduct a systematic literature review of typological scholarship on health care systems, in which 42 classifications are identified and analysed regarding regional coverage, methods, as well as the criteria and categories they include. The results point to major limitations: First, there is a general lack of representation and systematic classification of health care systems of the Global South. Second, there is a bias as criteria for classification are developed inductively based upon health care systems of the Global North. Consequently, existing typologies mostly fail to take into account the particularities of the countries beyond high-income economies. The study concludes by putting forth recommendations for developing a more comprehensive, globally applicable typological framework.
Why are typologies important in healthcare?
Typologies might also help to identify institutional indicators that seem to be of particular promise when comparing healthcare systems and reform processes. This contribution provides an overview of health system typologies and can be roughly divided into two areas of research: (1) classifications that focus on modes of governance, actors, and institutions and (2) classifications that try to capture how healthcare is financed, provided, and regulated. This chapter identifies prominent examples of both areas of research and also describes and characterizes types of healthcare systems and country classifications.
How does personal health affect political trust?
We explore two theoretical possibilities for why personal health may affect political trust: the psychological-democratic contract theory and the role of personal experience in opinion formation. We argue that citizens with health impairments are more likely to experience the direct effects of political decisions, as they are more dependent on public health services. Negative subjective evaluations of public services can lower trust levels, especially if people’s expectations are high. Using European Social Survey data, we analyse the association between health and trust in 19 Western European states. The results indicate that people in poor health exhibit lower levels of trust towards the political system than people in good health. The differences in trust between those in good and poor health are accentuated among citizens with left-leaning ideological values. Our results suggest that welfare issues may constitute a rare context in which personal, rather than collective, experiences affect opinion formation.
What is the role of health systems?
Health systems are responsible for delivering services that improve, maintain or restore the health of individuals and their communities. This includes the care provided by hospitals and family doctors, but also less visible tasks such as the prevention and control of communicable disease, health promotion, health workforce planning ...
What is the WHO Barcelona report?
A new report from the WHO Barcelona Office for Health Systems Financing has highlighted the need for governments to maintain a higher level of public spending on health for the wider benefit of society despite expected budgetary pressures following the pandemic.
Which organization is involved in public health development in Europe?
Both the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe ( WHO/Europe) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control are involved in public health development in Europe.
What is European health insurance?
European Health Insurance Card (French version pictured) Healthcare in Europe is provided through a wide range of different systems run at individual national levels. Most European countries have a system of tightly regulated, competing private health insurance companies, with government subsidies available for citizens who cannot afford coverage.
How many countries are in the European region?
The World Health Organization has listed 53 countries as comprising the European region. Health outcomes vary greatly by country. Countries in western Europe have had a significant increase in life expectancy since World War II, while most of eastern Europe and the former Soviet countries have experienced a decrease in life expectancy.
Is tobacco the largest preventable cause of death in Europe?
Tobacco use is the largest preventable cause of death in Europe. Many countries have passed legislation in the past few decades restricting tobacco sales and use.
What is the definition of quality of care?
Chapter 1 has defined quality of care as “the degree to which health services for individuals and populations are effective, safe and people-centred”. However, the chapter also highlighted that there is considerable confusion about the concept of quality because different institutions and people often mean different things when using it. To a certain degree, this is inevitable and even desirable because quality of care does mean different things in different contexts. However, this context dependency also makes clarity about the exact conceptualization of quality in a particular setting particularly important, before measurement can be initiated.
Is CABG publicly reported?
For example, surgeon-specific mortality data for patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) have been publicly reported in England and several states of the USA for many years (Radford et al., 2015; Romano et al., 2011 ). Yet debate continues whether results actually reflect the individual surgeon’s quality of care or rather the quality of the wider hospital team (for example, including anaesthesia, intensive care unit quality) or the organization and management of the hospital (for example, the organization of resuscitation teams within hospitals) (Westaby et al., 2015 ). Nevertheless, with data released at the level of the surgeon, responsibility is publicly attributed to the individual and not to the organization.
Abstract
Since the early 1970s, scholars have been working on typologies for the comparison of healthcare systems. Typologies enable scholars to more easily replicate existing studies and contrast findings from a comparative study with those of other studies that cover different years and countries.
Further Reading
Freeman R. The politics of health in Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press; 2000. Google Scholar