Principal Investigator: Professor Mossialos
Researchers: Jane Cheatley and Inna Thalmann
Start Date: December 2016
End Date: August 2017
Region: Europe
Keywords: healthcare services, health policy
In 2016, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE Health) was engaged by the Austrian Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection to undertake a review of the country’s social insurance system.
To assist the team in collecting and reviewing data from other European healthcare systems, LSE Health worked closely with the Institute of Advanced Studies (located in Vienna), Dominique Polton, Senior Advisor to the Director General of CNAMTS (France), and Professor Patrick Jeurissen, Chief Research Scientist at the Ministry of Health Welfare and Sports (the Netherlands).
Additional Austrian partners were also involved in the study and were responsible for their own respective reports. Specifically, Professor Pfeil from the University of Salzburg led a review into legal considerations regarding changes to the social insurance system, while Contrast Ernst&Young Management Consulting (GmbH) provided an in-depth overview of the current Austrian healthcare system.
The review also involved interviews with prominent Austrian stakeholders. In total, the project team engaged in over 30 stakeholder interviews, all of whom provided formal submissions outlining their feedback.
Topics of high importance to Austrian stakeholders included policy options regarding:
- The structure of the social insurance system
- Risk-adjustment payments across social health insurance carriers
- Healthcare quality
- Pharmaceutical expenditure and procurement
- Case and care management
- Health prevention, promotion and literacy