Governing public health services: The interplay between patients, professionals and politicians in comparative perspective

The overarching research questions of the proposed study are: What are the differences and similarities between the public health systems in Denmark, England and Norway? In what way do salient differences in the structure and history of the health care sy stems affect the roles of politicians, patients and professionals? How are roles, rights and responsibilities of professionals, patients and politicians defined in major policy documents and debates? How do the actors and parties involved assess and perfo rm their roles in practice? What are the relationships between democratically elected representatives and health professionals and administrators in the process of governing public health services? How do patients and other users of health services and th eir organisations exert an influence on the development of health services? In what way does the involvement and influence of politicians, patients and professionals affect the ability to perform “good” governance and make unambiguous prioriti es in health care sector? The study relates to three of the four research areas pointed out in the memorandum of health care research (Program for helse- og omsorgstjenester, ch. 4): governance, management and priority-setting; patients and users of publ ic health care; and comparative health care systems. Comparing similarities and differences in the health care systems of Denmark, England and Norway give an opportunity to explore how systemic features affect the interplay between politicians, patients a nd professionals, and thereby the governance of specialised health care in hospitals. Comparative study offers an opportunity for policy learning and policy transfer and adaptation. Different countries are increasingly faced with more or less similar prob lems in health care, and comparative looks into the experiences of other countries may be a fruitful way of informing domestic policy choices.