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There is growing recognition that transformation of healthcare systems towards health and well-being systems requires a continuous learning process. This explorative study aims to gain insight into the experiences with and investment in these learning processes within regional partnerships for health and in what they need to enhance their learning capacity to use the learning for transformation.

17 interviews were held with programme managers, data scientists, trusted advisors and a citizen representative, all involved in the learning process on a regional level in ten Dutch regional partnerships. The interviews were inductively and thematically analysed, focusing on the experiences and perceptions underlying the learning processes.

Regional partnerships invest in learning processes by organizing interactions between different groups of stakeholders and by reflecting on specific themes or on a region-wide level. Difficulty was found in region-wide reflection and in enhancing the learning capacity within the partnerships. Further enhancing the learning capacity required: (1) Investment in (the use of) expertise for translating learning outcomes into concrete action; (2) Leadership for change, underpinned by a shared sense of urgency to learn for transformation and (3) A facilitative environment for change which is both based on facilitative system structures and a basis of trust and commitment to learn and adapt.

The study highlighted the difficulty of learning on a region-wide level and the struggle to apply this learning for transformation. It provides insights into how learning processes and learning capacity can be further improved.

This paper aims to investigate the consequences of the coercive regulations for performance measurement and comparability that strengthened regional health authority’s control over organizations’ activities on management accountants’ relationship with clinician managers, who are the recipients of accounting information for decisional processes in health-care organizations. To achieve this aim, the research focuses on management accountants’ perception of their role and whether they perceive role conflict and role ambiguity.

A case study was undertaken in a public university hospital in the Emilia-Romagna region, Italy; 9 management accountants and 11 clinician managers were interviewed and secondary data analyzed.

Management accountants show low capabilities to support clinician managers’ decisional processes. Following the enactment of regulations, management accountants perform their role with a primary focus on functional responsibility. The focus on the provision of information to address regulations influenced management accountants’ capability to act as business partners in the organization. Because of the conflicting information needs from regulations and clinician managers, management accountants experience role conflict and ambiguity.

The paper has implications for policymakers, underlining the consequences of strict regulations on management accountants’ role. It also emphasizes the importance of revising accounting techniques to satisfy both regional requirements and clinician managers’ needs for decision-making.

The article contributes to knowledge related to the role of management accountants in health care. It explores, in particular, the consequences of coercive regulations in health-care organizations, adding knowledge to a field that remains quite unexplored.

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.

This chapter presents a framework for an action research based intervention to develop and transform sustainable healthcare in a regional context. The framework is illustrated by the case of the Regional Cancer Centre (RCC) West in western Sweden.

The framework draws upon and develops Pettigrew’s context–content–process model of strategic change and applies it to the unfolding narrative of the change effort. The empirical focus is the activities of a learning platform consisting of the RCC leadership, senior cancer physicians designated as process owners and an action research team. Data were collected from documents, observations of the learning platform, notes from meetings and interviews. Outcome data were obtained via the self-reporting of the physicians.

The learning platform established the capability for wide ranging development and quality improvement on the 23 cancer pathways as well as some support activities around principles of patient-centred care. A clear result is greater inter-organisational collaboration between care professionals as well as the introduction of new medicines, clinical methods, joint learning activities and new forms of measurement and monitoring of care practices. All of the improved measures are sustained.

Whilst there is no shortage of rhetoric on patient-centred care, the reality is that in complex healthcare systems solutions such as process-oriented approaches often fail. This case presents a model and an approach that eschews clear visions for change and instead places an emphasis on dialogue, participation, professional autonomy and collaborative communities as means for achieving the patient-centred ideal. The case also shows the value of seeing sustainable health systems as being grounded on practitioner–scholar collaboration that combines practical knowing with scientific knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of intellectual capital (IC) in promoting the sustainable development (SD) program of the Emilia-Romagna Health Service. The contributions of the following assets were investigated: leadership and competences, culture, performance measurement and incentives systems, social capital and technologies.

The case study was conducted following a hierarchical approach: perceptions of the regional directorate of public and social health, the general directors and healthcare professionals of the regional health system (the setting) were analyzed through interviews, focus groups and documentation in order to investigate: the emerging definition of SD within the setting; the role of IC, if any, in the achievement of the regional SD goals.

SD culture did not expand at the operative level because of the lack of involvement of healthcare professionals in a permanent dialogue for sustainability. Sustainability projects were not systematic which restricted the development of staff awareness of sustainability issues. Social capital enabled environmental projects and medical projects that increased patients’ involvement in disease management. Technology could help the shift toward sustainability, but it requires consideration of tangible and intangible costs for its successful adoption. SD performance measurement and incentives were in their infancy and cost accounting continues to dominate the healthcare sustainability debate.

Despite the low number of healthcare professionals involved in the focus groups, the paper represents one of the first attempts to frame their perceptions on SD implementation in healthcare.

Regional institutions should consider new ways of enacting SD which should be more inclusive of healthcare professionals. The establishment of a permanent interdisciplinary dialogue on sustainability would develop human, social and structural capital for sustainability. Healthcare organizations should monitor the environmental and social effects of their operations to enact their primary mission: the promotion of health.

The paper contributes to theory development related to the role of IC for SD in the public sector context and, in particular, in the healthcare sector where evidence is currently limited.

Despite many calls to strengthen connections between health systems and communities as a way to improve primary healthcare, little is known about how new collaborations can effectively alter service provision. The purpose of this paper is to explore how a health authority, municipal leaders and physicians worked together in the process of transforming primary healthcare.

A longitudinal qualitative case study was conducted to explore the processes of change at the regional level and within seven communities across Northern British Columbia (BC), Canada. Over three years, 239 interviews were conducted with physicians, municipal leaders, health authority clinicians and leaders and other health and social service providers. Interviews and contextual documents were analyzed and interpreted to articulate how ongoing transformation has occurred.

Four overall strategies with nine approaches were apparent. The strategies were partnering for innovation, keeping the focus on people in communities, taking advantage of opportunities for change and encouraging experimentation while managing risk. The strategies have bumped the existing system out of the status quo and are achieving transformation. Key components have been a commitment to a clear end-in-view, a focus on patients, families, and communities, and acting together over time.

This study illuminates how partnering for primary healthcare transformation is messy and complicated but can create a foundation for whole system change.

The rising of chronic illness and the continuous aging of the global population requires a re-organization of health care systems based on relations and exchange of information to address patient needs in the community. The re-organization of health care systems involves interconnected changes and the development of integrated health care information systems and novel eHealth services. In Crete, the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas has developed HYGEIAnet, a Regional Health Information Network (RHIN) to contribute to the re-organization of health care systems and information sharing. We present HYGEIAnet, some of the most critical and novel eHealth services developed and deployed, discuss the impact of an RHIN on health care processes, and explore innovative models and services for health delivery and the coordination of care. We then critically discuss lessons learned regarding the effective management of change to overcome organizational and cultural issues in such large-scale initiatives. The paper concludes with policy and practice recommendations for managing change processes in health care organizations.

This paper aims to hypothesize that modern health systems are transforming towards what has been called a health ecosystem in complexity‐based health care literature. It has been argued that complexity arises from the interconnectedness, which in this paper is equated with knowledge flows between actors. The paper seeks to discuss the possible implications of a health ecosystem approach to health system management.

The paper is conceptual in nature but the transition towards a health ecosystem is illustrated with an example of a regional health care system in Finland. The case description and related analysis presented are based on qualitative data gathered by interviewing leading office‐holders, by process modeling and by observing management group meetings.

Conceptually, a health ecosystem seems to have potential for the system‐level analysis of the health care system. The discussion concludes that management of knowledge flows should be a strategic management function for individual health organizations as well as for the wider health system.

This study focuses on a Finnish health care system. The operations and structures of health care services and systems vary in different areas and countries.

The practical illustration of the health ecosystem provides a reminder that health care systems are dynamic and largely based on interaction between different actors. The approach provides new strategic insights for the development of health care systems by concentrating on interrelationships and knowledge flows.

The literature has suggested that the ecosystem metaphor offers useful insights for the development of health care systems. Nevertheless, this approach has not been thoroughly studied so far. This paper makes a contribution by presenting a practical illustration of the framework and in light of this discusses the possible implications for health care management.