Minimum Network of Providing Inpatient Health Care
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Coordination in the Public Sector: Case study catalogue |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Management and administrative |
| Keywords | health care; Slovakia; health insurance companies |
| Description | The coordination practice deals with the issue of the physical access of patients to health services. In the Slovak system where most of the health-care providers are privately owned establishments and most of the health-care finances are in the hands of a network of competing (at least formally) public and private health insurance companies, the guarantee of physical access can be achieved only by high-quality coordination activities of state bodies on all levels. The Slovak solution to the issue of minimum physical access is to a large extent based on an interesting coordination tool – “the minimum network of providers”. This study investigates how such a minimum network is defined from the central level and how its existence is achieved on the level of self-governing regions in Slovakia. The results provide several important policy lessons with regard to the policy-making and implementation capacity of the Slovak government, complexity of coordinating pluralistic service - delivery system and pros and cons of intervention in the short-term perspective. |