Health Systems in Transition

Preface

he Health Systems in Transition (HiT) series consists of country-based

reviews that provide a detailed description of a health system and of

reform and policy initiatives in progress or under development in a

specific country. Each review is produced by country experts in collaboration

with the Observatory’s staff. In order to facilitate comparisons between

countries, reviews are based on a template, which is revised periodically. The

template provides detailed guidelines and specific questions, definitions and

examples needed to compile a report.

HiTs seek to provide relevant information to support policy-makers and

analysts in the development of health systems in Europe. They are building

blocks that can be used:

•

to learn in detail about different approaches to the organization,

financing and delivery of health services and the role of the main

actors in health systems;

•

to describe the institutional framework, the process, content and

implementation of health reform programmes;

•

to highlight challenges and areas that require more in-depth analysis;

•

to provide a tool for the dissemination of information on health systems

and the exchange of experiences of reform strategies between policy-

makers and analysts in different countries; and

•

to assist other researchers in more in-depth comparative health

policy analysis.

Compiling the reviews poses a number of methodological problems. In many

countries, there is relatively little information available on the health system and

the impact of reforms. Due to the lack of a uniform data source, quantitative

data on health services are based on a number of different sources, including