Alexander S. Preker - Böcker

Hospitals remain an important source of critical health care services in most countries, providing both basic and advanced care to their populations. They are often the provider ""of last resort"" for the critically ill and poor. Yet hospitals also make up the largest expenditure category of the health system both in developed and developing countries. Innovations in Health Service Delivery offers insights into recent trends in the reform of public hospitals, with a focus on organizational changes such as increased management autonomy, corporatization, and privatization. This book also provides an opportunity to further understand the objectives, design, implementation, and evaluation of such reforms.

Promoting health and confronting disease challenges requires effective action across a range of activities in the health system. Managing scarce resources and health care effectively and efficiently is an important part of this story. This volume presents six regional reviews of country level experience in improving resource allocation and strategic purchasing in low- and middle income countries.

Rich or poor, countries around the globe are struggling to find a way to pay for health care. This book presents a compelling analysis that shows private health insurance can play a role in providing more affordable access to health care to more people, no matter what their economic status.

"Scaling Up Affordable Health Insurance: Staying the Course" is the fifth volume in a series of in-depth reviews on the role of health care financing in improving access for low-income populations to needed care, protecting them from the impoverishing effects of illness, and addressing the important issues of social exclusion in government financed programs. Success in improving access and financial protection through community and private voluntary health insurance have led many countries to attempt to make membership compulsory and to offer subsidized insurance through the public sector. The protagonists are divided into several camps; from supporters of health insurance to opponents or skeptics.

This book explores the business and investment implications of sustainability, both opportunities and challenges. The volume lays the groundwork for understanding the growing areas of sustainable business and sustainable finance. Over the past few decades, the world has witnessed significant improvements in economic development that meet a wide range of human needs. Ensuring that such development takes place in a "sustainable" way is the central focus of the book. The book provides insights for businesses, investors, and others on how to navigate this complex and evolving landscape.The United Nations and global leaders in business and investment have emphasized the important role that the private sector can play in protecting the environment and promoting a more sustainable use of resources."What is needed now is a new era of economic growth — growth that is at the same time socially and environmentally sustainable. This call for action in the Forward to the 1987 Bruntland Report (Our Common Future), which emphasizes that economic growth is part of the solution not the problem, still rings true nearly 40 years later.Gro Harlem BrundtlandReport of the World Commission on Environment and Development, United Nations 1987"Private sector leadership is vital to advance sustainable development and fight the existential threats of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution."António GuterresUnited Nations Secretary-GeneralMessage to International Chamber of Commerce's 13th World Chambers CongressUnited Nations Press Release on the Environment, June 21, 2023 (SG/SM/21851)Like Henry Ford's strategy over 100 years ago at the time of the mass introduction of the Model T Ford, Elon Musk had a similar strategy for switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy powered cars. "[Initially enter] the high end of the market, where customers are prepared to pay a premium, and then drive down [the] market as fast as possible to higher unit volume and lower prices with each successive model."Elon MuskCEO Tesla Inc, Interview with Solar Tribune, Feb 16, 2020"Investing for the long term requires taking a long-term view of what will impact returns, including demographics, government policy, technological advancements, and the transition to a low carbon economy."Laurence D FinkBlackrock Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Larry Fink's Annual Chairman's Letter to Investors,Blackrock, 2023"Capital markets are an extraordinarily powerful tool in the fight against climate change. Government action is certainly critical. But ultimately, reducing emissions globally depends on the private sector recognizing the commercial opportunities that sustainability presents."Michael R BloombergFounder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg PhilanthropiesDavid M SolomonCEO of Goldman SachsMobilize the Market to Fight Global WarmingBloomberg, Opinion Article, April 27, 2021

The recent expansion of health insurance coverage in the USA under the Affordable Health Care Act, and current threats to reverse the benefits of this reform, have once again focused the world's attention on the difficult challenges faced by other countries trying to provide better access to healthcare to their population at an affordable cost. This textbook provides a comparative review of financing universal access to healthcare in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.The first two chapters of the book provide a framework for financing universal access to healthcare. The remaining eight chapters present case studies of eight OECD countries that have successfully introduced reforms to finance universal access to healthcare for their population through landmark legislative reforms. A concluding chapter focuses on the lessons learned from the OECD and recommendations from policymakers and others who are planning similar reforms. The book is designed as a learning tool for students and as a user guide for policymakers.

This textbook for graduate and postgraduate university students and for healthcare policymakers reviews a set of countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that have introduced universal access to healthcare through an incremental expansion of health insurance coverage over time. This second volume is a companion to Volume 1, A Comparative Review of Landmark Health Reforms in the OECD, which reviews a different set of countries that approach universal access to healthcare via a 'Big Bang' reform process instead.The first two chapters of this volume provide a framework for financing universal access to healthcare through expansion of health insurance, rather than a government-financed National Health Service. The subsequent chapters present case studies of a) the USA which is still struggling; and b) 11 other OECD countries that succeeded in introducing reforms to finance universal access to healthcare for their population in the 20th century, through incremental health insurance reforms.The book's detailed review of the current situation in the USA shows how the road to universal access to healthcare has been a long and tortuous process, spanning more than 100 years of on-and-off reforms. The recent expansion of health insurance coverage in the USA under the Affordable Health Care Act, and current threats to reverse the benefits of this reform, have once again focused the world's attention on just how difficult it is to expand coverage at an affordable cost. Despite being the one of the richest countries in the world in terms of per capita income, and spending more on healthcare than anywhere else in the world, the USA remains among the few OECD countries — including Turkey and Mexico — that still has not achieved the elusive goal of providing access to affordable healthcare to its whole population.The subsequent 11 case studies show how reforms leading to universal access to healthcare were not a one-size-fits-all process and did not imply coverage for all people for everything. Rather, universal access to healthcare was a delicate balance between three critical dimensions: who is covered, what services are covered and how much of the cost is covered through some form of prepayment. The OECD experience has been that there are important trade-offs between these three dimensions. No country in the world is rich enough to bear the costs of providing unrestrained access to a limitless range of services for their whole population. Rather, compromises were made that reflect the social contract and political realities of the time of expansion in coverage in the respective countries.The concluding two chapters focus on the lessons learned from the OECD and recommendations for policymakers and others both in the USA and elsewhere who are planning similar reforms.

This volume reviews the economic underpinnings (investment and financing) and institutional reforms needed to successfully scale up the education of health workers. In this regard, the book examines five major economic and institutional challenges that policy makers face: (1) governance of health education organizations and systems; (2) approaches to financing the education of health workers; (3) the special nature of capital investment in expanding the capacity of health education institutions; (4) public-private partnerships in health education; and (5) equity in accessing health education, with a special focus on issues that arise from private approaches to the education of health workers.Much of the existing literature focuses on the quality and contents of training health workers, and very little has been written on the institutional dimension of financing their training and education. This book examines the complex institutional and financial models and approaches that can impact the demand and supply of health worker education programs around the world.Building on the findings of the Independent Commission on the Education of Health Professionals for the 21st Century, which published on the foundations and the issues of global postsecondary professional education, this volume brings in new and in-depth aspects such as governance, capital investments, and the role of the private sector in the production of health professionals; thus allowing the reader to understand how the health worker education field has moved from theory to practice.