Comparative Health Policies and National Healthcare Systems: Management, Economics, Governance and Reforms

"Every country has a national health system, which reflects its history, its economic development, and its dominant political ideology. Because of these diverse circumstances, there are several types of health systems...Any national health system in a country at any stage of economic development may be analyzed according to five principal component parts: resources, organization, management, economic support, and delivery of services...The management of health systems entails several processes: health planning, administration (supervision, consultation, coordination, etc.), regulation, and legislation." (Roomer, 1993: 335-353). 

The health care system is usually a very complex structure and the study of its historical evolution in various cases is lost over the years. The health system includes inputs from people's beliefs, science, social, political, economic and commercial factors, etc., while usually in its various manifestations, as crystallized in each case, it is observed that it did not emerge after systematic and specialized planning but evolutionarily with the influence of multidimensional factors. Obviously, the above already outlines the concept of the health system as a coherent whole consisting of many different and interrelated components (sectoral and intersectoral), but also of the community itself, while the sum of these parts produce combined effects on the health of a population. In order to build a targeted health system, it is necessary for all parts to cooperate and adapt to each other, and constant communication and division of labour between them must take place in clear and unambiguous ways (Kleczkowski et al., 1984: 13). 

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a health system is essentially made up of the sum total of organisations, people and actions whose primary intention is to promote, restore or even maintain health. In addition, a health system must include six key building blocks: a) good health services; b) a well-performing health workforce; c) a well-functioning health information system; d) equitable access to essential medical products, vaccines and technologies; e) a health financing system with adequate resources; f) appropriate system leadership and governance (WHO, 2007: 2-3)

This collective volume aims at the comparison between healthcare systems and health policies in order to unveil differences, similarities, best practices and barriers in the fields of, but not limited to management, economics, governance and reform practices. Contributions comparatively analyzing systemic differences between diverse cases or focusing on specific characteristics of selected cases are highly welcome.