Health Policy Developments: Focus on Public-Private Mix, Patient Safety, Public Health

The latest edition of Health Policy Developments describes how countries search for solutions that combine the state's role with private entrepreneurship. The book illustrates the many shapes that privatization can take in health care reform, ranging from financing models featuring co-insurance and subsidies for private insurance policies to new types of hospital ownership and new contractual relationships, such as public concessions to private providers. The book also looks at the ways hospitals are working to reduce medical errors, which are often fatal. For example, more people die every year from medical errors than from traffic accidents or breast cancer. To optimize patient safety, several countries use sophisticated IT systems, nonpunitive reporting measures for error identification and prevention (making them part of quality management), and greater transparency.