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. 2021 Mar 15:9:636750.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.636750. eCollection 2021.

The Provision of Private Healthcare Services in European Countries: Recent Data and Lessons for Universal Health Coverage in Other Settings

Dominic Montagu  1   2
Affiliations

The Provision of Private Healthcare Services in European Countries: Recent Data and Lessons for Universal Health Coverage in Other Settings

Dominic Montagu. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Universal Health Coverage (UHC) exists in all of the countries of Europe, despite variation on the ownership structure of health delivery systems. As countries around the world seek to advance UHC and manage the private sector within their health systems, the European experiences can offer useful insights. We found four different models for the provision of healthcare, with the private sector predominant in some countries, and of minimal importance in others. The European experiences indicate that UHC can be effectively provided with, or without, large-scale private sector provision in hospital, specialty, and primary care services, and that moreover it can be provided with high levels of patient satisfaction. These findings offer regulatory models for countries in other regions to review as they advance UHC.

Keywords: Universal Health Coverage; health policy; health seeking behavior; health system governance; private sector.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Public and private insurance coverage. Blue bars show population covered by public insurance. Orange bars show population with private insurance*. *Private insurance is supplemental to public in all countries except the US, where private coverage is often a substitute for public insurance. Countries showing zero private insurance coverage did not report any to the OECD in 2018. (Source: https://stats.oecd.org/).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Hospital ownership models within European health systems. Data not available for: Greece and Slovakia.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Percent of all hospitals that are private and percent of all hospital beds that are private. Where private beds are much smaller than hospitals, hospitals focus on outpatient care. Data not available for: Denmark, Greece, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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