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The purpose of this paper is to report on current developments in user involvement in healthcare in Slovenia and to explore the issue from the macro-, mezzo- and micro-levels.

User involvement is first contextualised within history of the organisation of healthcare system, from its socialist past through to its post-transitional developments. Second, user involvement is tracked through an analysis of healthcare policies and legislation as well as at its institutional and organisational levels. Finally, user involvement practices are illustrated from the perspective of individual patients. A descriptive and exploratory case study design was employed, including a literature review, document analysis and qualitative thematic analysis of nine in-depth and four semi-structured interviews.

The findings reveal a complex and at times ambivalent picture in which user involvement is still not firmly embedded into the healthcare system, despite being generally accepted.

No systematic qualitative research of patient involvement in Slovenia has previously been published. This research will establish a basis for further investigations of the topic.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how healthcare-users’ engagement is perceived, how it occurs and how these perceptions differ between three European countries: England, Poland and Slovenia, using the concepts of voice, choice and coproduction.

This comparative, qualitative study is based on a review of legal documents, academic literature and semi-structured interviews conducted in October and November 2011. A research sample consisted of 21 interviewees representing various stakeholders including healthcare-users, doctors and managers. Primary and secondary data were analysed using theoretical thematic analysis. Emerging themes were identified from the interviews and related to the indicators describing healthcare-users’ involvement in the voice, choice and coproduction model.

Results of the comparative qualitative research suggest that the healthcare-users’ influence is strongly grounded in England where the healthcare system and professionals are prepared to include healthcare-users in the decision-making process. In Slovenia, cultural development of healthcare-users’ involvement seems to proceed the institutional development. In Poland, institutions are ready to involve healthcare-users in decision-making process although the cultural desirability of involving users among doctors and patients is lacking.

The notion of user involvement is increasingly gaining importance and research attention, yet there is still little known about the way cultural, political, historical differences between various European countries influence it. This paper explores this little known area using the original approach of user involvement (Dent et al., 2011) with input from various stakeholders including patients, healthcare representatives and academics.