From Competition to Collaboration: Changes in the Principles and Institutional Background of the British Healthcare System

Abstract

Transforming health systems is an ongoing challenge in almost every country in the world. Today, the direction of change also has many common features, with the introduction of collaborative, integrated forms of care playing a key role. Among the reforms, the changes in the UK health system over the last decade provide many lessons learned, which have resulted in an increasing replacement of market competition between providers by an approach and legislation based on inter-institutional cooperation and integration. Based on the relevant literature and other analyses in this topic, the study argues that the cyclical nature of organisational-institutional transformations shows a strong correlation with the fundamental concepts that determine the operation of the National Health Service.