Health Reforms in South Eastern Europe
event
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Date
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Monday 24 & Tuesday 25 May 2010
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Location
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Inter-University Centre, Dubrovnik, Zagreb, Croatia
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Organisers
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LSEE-Research on South Eastern Europe
European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies
The Andrija Štampar School of Public Health
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The reform of public health systems has become a key issue for the countries in transition in South Eastern Europe. Public health has been adversely affected by many of the rapid social changes associated with transition across the region and the state managed health systems are in dire need of change.
In many countries this reform has taken the form of an attempt to introduce competitive market mechanisms into the public health system. However, there is a lack of evidence that these goals have been achieved, with concerns about increased costs through the contracting for health care services and a negative impact on equity. Reforms have aimed at reducing hospital expenditure and strengthening primary care. This has involved reforming the system of polyclinics and promoting individual general practitioner models, on the basis of policy transfer from Western experience. However, many reform initiatives in the transition countries of SEE have been based on ideology rather than on evidence.
There has also been a lack of capacity to implement and evaluate reforms at different levels of the health system. The efficiency of health systems in SEE has also been adversely affected by the misallocation of resources towards hospital care, and an over-emphasis on inpatient stays. The financing of health systems in SEE relies to a large degree on health insurance, but this is sometimes subject to corruption and inefficiencies.
In order to examine these issues, LSEE organised a two-day Research Workshop on Health Reforms in South Eastern Europe in May 2010, in close cooperation with the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and the Andrija Štampar School of Public Health. The workshop, held at the Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik, aimed to provide an opportunity for researchers from all fields of social science, including economics, politics, sociology, and health studies, to share their findings and discuss the current direction of health sector reform in South Eastern Europe. About 30 participants attended the workshop from countries throughout the region including Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia.
The workshop enabled a useful exchange of opinions and discussion of the latest research findings on the state of health reforms in the region. Especially notable from the discussion was the increasing role of the private sector in providing health services in some SEE countries in the face of poor quality and limited access to services in the public sector, which has been even more pronounced following the impact of the global economic crisis on public expenditure.
The papers from the workshop have been published under the the New Perspectives on South East Europe Series of Palgrave Macmillan Publishers|.