Elsevier

Health Policy

Volume 122, Issue 5, May 2018, Pages 453-456
Health Policy

Editorial
Cross-country comparative research – Lessons from advancing health system and policy research on the occasion of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies’ 20th anniversary

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Introduction

This issue of Health Policy is dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and particularly the Observatory’s contribution to shaping comparative health system and policy research in Europe – the domain of this journal too. Below, we will briefly outline the origin and functions of the Observatory as well as its contribution to research over the past two decades. We then put the selected papers in this issue into perspective and provide an overview on comparative papers published in Health Policy since 2014, i.e. analyse which topics and which countries have been covered. Several of these articles are actually authored by Observatory staff and its networks and fit into the tradition of comparative health system research that the Observatory helped develop.

Section snippets

Origins and functions of the observatory

The European Observatory is a partnership of international organizations, several country governments and academic institutions that was set up to provide evidence for policy makers. Its origins can be traced back to the early 1990s. Back then, several ‘new’ Central and Eastern European countries were emerging as a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which were facing huge challenges in their transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy [1]. At the same time,

How the observatory operates

Today the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies represents a partnership of WHO Europe; the governments of Austria, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom; the Veneto Region of Italy; the European Commission; the World Bank; the French National Union of Health Insurance Funds (UNCAM); the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).

Each partner provides a member to a

New developments in country monitoring and comparative research

Over the years the Observatory has focused on including virtually all European region countries in its portfolio and refining the template for the HiTs (in fact a revised template will be introduced this year). It has also focused on capturing the health system and policy developments in a timelier manner. Since 2012, the Health Systems and Policy Monitor (www.HSPM.org) has become the main monitoring platform and as of 2018 hosts 27EU health system country pages. They contain “living HiTs” as

Articles in this issue

The current issue presents a selection of comparative articles, both written by Observatory staff and collaborators as well as others. The first set of papers focuses on the financing function, by looking at (i) strategic purchasing in ten countries, namely seven “old” EU member states, two “new” ones and Switzerland [7]; (ii) paying hospital specialists in eight countries, both in Europe and in North America [8]; and (ii) the role of voluntary private health insurance in three Nordic countries

Comparative research articles in health policy since 2014

While this Editorial is obviously too short to provide a fair assessment of the methodologies chosen to address the various topics, Table 1 provides an overview of topics that have been addressed as well as countries have been included in eight of the comparative articles in this issue as well as 21 additional articles published in Health Policy since 2014 [5], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36].
Regarding

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