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The purpose of this paper is to contextualize the concepts of “service co-production” and “value co-creation” to health care services, challenging the traditional bio-medical model which focusses on illness treatment and neglects the role played by patients in the provision of care.

For this purpose, the author conducted a systematic review, which paved the way for the identification of the concept of “health care co-production” and allowed to discuss its effects and implications. Starting from a database of 254 records, 65 papers have been included in systematic review and informed the development of this paper.

Co-production of health care services implies the establishment of co-creating partnerships between health care professionals and patients, which are aimed at mobilizing the dormant resources of the latter. However, several barriers prevent the full implementation of health care co-production, nurturing the application of the traditional bio-medical model.

Co-production of health care is difficult to realize, due to both health care professionals’ hostility and patients unwillingness to be involved in the provision of care. Nonetheless, the scientific literature is consistent in claiming that co-production of care paves the way for increased health outcomes, enhanced patient satisfaction, better service innovation, and cost savings. The establishment of multi-disciplinary health care teams, the improvement of patient-provider communication, and the enhancement of the use of ICTs for the purpose of value co-creation are crucial ingredients in the recipe for increased patient engagement.

To the knowledge of the author, this is the first paper aimed at systematizing the scientific literature in the field of health care co-production. The originality of this paper stems from its twofold relevance: on the one hand, it emphasizes the pros and the cons of health care co-production and, on the other hand, it provides with insightful directions to deal with the engagement of patients in value co-creation.

General medical practitioners (GPs) in the UK are working from increasingly sophisticated premises. UK Government consultations have highlighted that inadequate premises are currently a barrier to improvements in primary health care. Therefore the National Health Service (Primary Care) Act 1997 permits pilot schemes for primary health care which may encompass property improvements. Provision of quality buildings has implications for the willingness of patients to consult GPs, the range of services offered by family doctors and the cost‐effectiveness of primary health care delivery. The decentralized nature of primary health care raises issues about the evolution of building design knowledge to cater for technical and organizational innovations in health care. As primary health care facilities become more sophisticated, advances in construction management techniques need to be applied so that they are procured efficiently. Current real estate arrangements for the provision of primary health care facilities are causing concern. The capital investment involved is increasingly burdensome for GPs. Lack of Government finance is leading to pressures for the employment of private capital, with accompanying new opportunities for property managers.

This paper offers an overview of the defining traits of the Spanish National Health Service (Sistema Nacional de Salud, in Spanish), as well as an account of its current trends in both spending and organisational changes. Beyond a thorough description of the Spanish public health-care system and its main quantitative indicators, we offer a critical review of the ongoing decentralisation process of health-care provision and its recent trends in pharmaceutical spending.

The text is organised in the following two parts. Part 1 provides an overview of the Spanish health-care system, structured in several sections. It starts by placing Spain within a classification of international health-care systems and is followed by an account of the importance of public provision in the Spanish case. A relation of the guiding principles of the Spanish public system concludes the first part. The second part focuses on two key developments that have shaped the evolution of the Spanish health-care system in the recent decades. The first is the process of decentralisation of health-care; the section explains the challenges arising with the transference of health-care provision responsibilities from the central to regional governments. The second section critically reviews the recent expansion of drug-related spending in the Spanish health-care system, and the policy responses to attempt to contain health-care costs.

Integrated health care lacks a theoretical concept of the user figure that is appropriate to reflect users’ various claims and multi-dimensional interrelations in the care process. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Key goals of integrated health care, such as a continuity of care, seamless services and better health outcomes depend strongly on users’ capabilities to engage themselves in the care process. These goals are hardly reachable if integrated health care schemes operate with a one-dimensional understanding of users’ identity.

The suggested concept of users’ identity facets suggests that users draw from different sources while receiving integrated health care. Thus, users are patients, co-producers, citizens, consumers and community members in one person and at the same time. Each facet of the user identity gains or loses relevance depending on health care contexts, health statuses, personal values and the design of service arrangements. As demonstrated by the example of disease management programmes (DMPs), care schemes for chronically ill persons, users have to apply different facets of their identities in order to benefit best from service provision. Moreover, addressing users’ identity may facilitate the extent of integration in DMPs.

Integrated health care schemes are challenged to invent strategies that facilitate and support coherence among users’ diverse identities in the process of service provision. Lessons could be learned from small-scale and localized integrated health care networks.

The unacknowledged and obscure mechanisms which “inflate” demand for health care provisions, thereby exacerbating the persistent gap between demand and the resources available to meet it, are considered. It is suggested that the structural scrutiny of emergent medical research ‐ alongside health promotion measures ‐ could be used as a means to moderate health care demand. It is argued that anti‐utilitarian objectives to this approach may be equally levelled at laissez‐faire justifications for unfettered research.

Despite continuing socioeconomic and racial/ethnic gaps in many health care services, the National Healthcare Disparities Report (2004) documents parity in substance abuse treatment provision among individuals of varying socioeconomic and racial/ethnic backgrounds. This study investigates that achievement by analyzing the relationship between community socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disadvantage and organizational provision of substance abuse treatment, treatment need and utilization across United States counties, 2000, 2002 and 2003. Results confirm equity in service provision in poorer communities and those with higher concentrations of African Americans. Significant disparities remain, however, in communities with higher concentrations of Hispanics, youth and female-headed households. Limitations and implications for future studies of health care provision are discussed.

This paper aims to explore current sustainable facilities management knowledge and practice, focussing specifically on sustainable waste management implementation in health-care facilities with an aim to conceptualize a framework for assessing performance and impact of successful implementation of safe and sustainable health-care waste management on health-care provision.

This paper used a review of existing literature in relation to health-care waste management in the context of sustainable facilities management and facilities management performance and forms a basis for further research.

The growing significance of the strategic role of facilities management is established. Building on this recognition, a conceptual framework for assessing both implementation of sustainable facilities management practice in the context of waste management in health-care facilities and its impact on health-care provision is proposed.

This paper conceptualizes a framework for optimizing safe and sustainable waste management implementation in health-care facilities and assessing its impact on the bottom-line of health-care provision.

The UK Government-funded National Health Service (NHS) is experiencing significant pressures because of the complexity of challenges to, and demands of, health-care provision. This situation has driven government policy level support for transformational change initiatives, such as value-based health care (VBHC), through closer alignment and collaboration across the health-care system-life science sector nexus. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the necessary antecedents to collaboration in VBHC through a critical exploration of the existing literature, with a view to establishing the foundations for further development of policy, practice and theory in this field.

A literature review was conducted via searches on Scopus and Google Scholar between 2009 and 2019 for peer-reviewed articles containing keywords and phrases “Value-based healthcare industry” and “healthcare industry collaboration”. Refinement of the results led to the identification of “guiding conditions” (GCs) for collaboration in VBHC.

Five literature-derived GCs were identified as necessary for the successful implementation of initiatives such as VBHC through system-sector collaboration. These are: a multi-disciplinarity; use of appropriate technological infrastructure; capturing meaningful metrics; understanding the total cycle-of-care; and financial flexibility. This paper outlines research opportunities to empirically test the relevance of the five GCs with regard to improving system-sector collaboration on VBHC.

This paper has developed a practical and constructive framework that has the potential to inform both policy and further theoretical development on collaboration in VBHC.

This paper reports an investigation of a hybrid ex-state-owned enterprise (ex-SOE) providing ICT (Information and Communication Technology) services in the Italian healthcare sector (in-house provision). The authors aim to offer a framing that reflects the concerns expressed in the interdisciplinary literature on hybrid SOEs from management, public administration and, more recently, accounting.

This study operationalizes Besharov and Smith’s (2014) theoretical model on multiple logics to analyze institutional structures and organizational outcomes at an ICT in-house provider. It builds on extensive textual analysis of regulatory, archival, survey and interview data.

The study results show that the combination of hybridity in the form of layering of multiple logics in the health care sector (Polzer et al., 2016) creates problems for the effectiveness of ICT provision. In particular, the hybrid organization the authors study remained stuck in established competing relationships despite a restructure of regional health care governance. The study findings also reflect on the design of organizational control mechanisms when balancing different logics.

The identified case-study accountability practices and performance system add to the debate on hybrid organizations in the case of ex-SOEs and facilitate the understanding and management of hybrids in the public sector. The authors note policymaking implications.

The authors’ operationalization of Besharov and Smith's (2014) model adds clarity to key elements of their model, notably how to identify evidence in order to disentangle notions of centrality and compatibility. By doing this, the authors’ analysis offers potential insights into both managerial design and policy prescription. The authors provide cautionary tales around institutional reorganization regarding the layered synthesis of logics within these organizations.

The influx of refugees and asylum-seekers over the past decade into the European Union creates challenges to the health systems of receiving countries in the preparedness and requisite adjustments to policy addressing the new needs of the migrant population. This study aims to examine and compare policies for access to health care and the related health outcomes for refugees and asylum-seekers settling both in the UK and Germany as host countries.

The paper conducted a scoping review of academic databases and grey literature for studies within the period 2010-2017, seeking to identify evidence from current policies and service provision for refugees and asylum-seekers in Germany and the UK, distilling the best practice and clarifying gaps in knowledge, to determine implications for policy.

Analysis reveals that legal entitlements for refugees and asylum-seekers allow access to primary and secondary health care free of charge in the UK versus a more restrictive policy of access limited to acute and emergency care during the first 15 months of resettlements in Germany. In both countries, many factors hinder the access of this group to normal health care from legal status, procedural hurdles and lingual and cultural barriers. Refugees and asylum-seeker populations were reported with poor general health condition, lower rates of utilization of health services and noticeable reliance on non-governmental organizations.

This paper helps to fulfill the need for an extensive research required to help decision makers in host countries to adjust health systems towards reducing health disparities and inequalities among refugees and asylum-seekers.