In both developed and developing countries, health care has pluralized as health service professionals and suppliers, and citizens have each sought to meet their changing needs, and the expanding possibilities of modern medicine. Increasingly, the challenge for national governments is to balance more transparent public and private roles, against social pressures to ensure that all citizens enjoy access to essential health care. A central issue is the relationship among the various systems that are part of the policy domain, and the interactions among the various stakeholders, who may be within or across systems.

Within the field of health care systems, the activities of ECORYS concentrate on the following main topics:

Health care strategies
The holy grail of health services research is finding ways to provide high quality of care to the entire population at a cost that society (and individuals) can afford. This involves developing, implementing and evaluating health care strategies that can deal with both scientific and policy challenges (such as the ageing population in the EU, health and financial situation in transition countries; healthcare system reforms in the context of general political, economic, and social changes).

Priority setting in health care
Resources for health care are limited, so that priorities for allocating them are inevitably set, whether explicitly or implicitly. Allocation of health resources involves several dimensions, including the relationship of health care resources to other public needs, such as education; distribution within health care itself (which health technologies should be given priority); and e.g. the criteria on the basis of which priorities are set.

Determining health care benefit packages
All health care systems have a more-or-less defined ‘package’ of benefits, often referred to as ‘benefits’ or ‘covered services’. Explicit coverage decisions have been made concerning what services to provide for a number of years. An important part of this process has been to make coverage decisions increasingly dependent on clear evidence of health benefits, i.e. efficacy and effectiveness, assuring cost-effectiveness of services, or value for money, and improving equity of access to services. ECORYS is well-suited to evaluate and compare practices of coverage decision-making and identify barriers and possible solutions to determine health care benefit packages.

Examples of our project experience can be found under the heading 'Projects' (right of this text) and in our web project database.

More information
For more information, please contact:

Arthur ten Have
Manager Social Sector Development
T +0031 (0)10 453 86 82
E This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Wija Oortwijn
Senior consultant
T 0031 (0)10 453 84 21
E This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it