In a period where decentralisation seemed to be the prominent trend, Norway in 2002 chose to re-centralise the hospital sector. The reform had three main aims; cost control, efficiency and reduced waiting times. This study investigates whether the hospital reform has improved hospital...

Aim and Motivation: This paper investigates the income and socio-economic effects on institutional long-term care demand (LTC) in Finland from an economics perspective. If lessons are learned from major contributors of care needs and costs then preventative measures can be designed to answer...

In recent years, decentralization of financial and political power has been perceived as a useful means to improve outcomes of the health care sector. Such reforms are often a result of fashion, rather than being based on knowledge of “what works”. If decentralization is the favored strategy...

The paper examines the heterogeneity with respect to the impact of a financial reform - Activity Based Financing (ABF) - on hospital efficiency in Norway. Measures of technical efficiency and of cost-efficiency are considered. The data set is from a contiguous ten-year panel of 47 hospitals...

Activity-based financing (ABF) was implemented in the Norwegian hospital sector from 1 July 1997. A fraction (30 to 50 per cent) of the block grant from the state to the county councils has been replaced by a matching grant depending upon the number and composition of hospital treatments. As a...

Norwegian government policy is to increase the supply of psychiatric services to children and young persons, both by increasing the number of personnel and by increasing productivity in the psychiatric outpatient clinics (BUP). Increased accessibility to services is observed for the last years,...

From 2002 the Norwegian hospital sector is to be transferred from county to state ownership, organised through regional semiautonomous companies. A major motivation for the reform is to allow for more specialised hospital production. If there are economies or diseconomies of scope, the...

While measures of output in mental health care are even harder to find than in other health care activities, some indicators are available. In modelling productive efficiency the problem is to select the output variables that best reflect the use of resources, in the sense that these variables...

Fra 1. juli 1997 ble det innført Innsatsstyrt finansiering (ISF) av somatiske sykehus i Norge. Innsatsstyrt finansiering innebærer at deler av utgiftene til fylkeskommunens behandling av inneliggende pasienter refunderes av staten. Fylkene inngår ulike former for avtaler med sykehusene....

Innsatsstyrt finansiering (ISF) ble innført for somatiske sykehus i Norge fra 1.7.1997. ISF innebærer at deler av fylkeskommunenes utgifter til behandling av inneliggende pasienter refunderes av staten. Refusjonen avhenger av antall og sammensetning av behandlede pasienter, og refusjonen var i...