The European Health Consumer of Tomorrow - Johan Hjertqvist

Also, displaying what we call the “consumer index” which is a first attempt to benchmark the national healthcare systems within the European Union, so the consumer can make comparisons, and we hope to stimulate the discussion about the consumer friendliness or maybe even the opposite, the lack of consumer friendliness in many of the designs of healthcare today. [...] To me it explains a lot of the – what you call “reforms” going on all the time: You reorganise the hospitals in one way or you try to change the reimbursement system or the assessment system or the control system or whatever it is and you, not until you really move into radical new design and really allow the consumer to become much more influential you will be able to, that’s our judgement, able. [...] And of course the turning from one historical system where the politicians all the time can say that “we are in control, we are elected to control the system, to control costs” and so on; in reality we know that they control very little of the production or the outcome. [...] To what extent do you envisage people in politics and people in various civil services around Europe will want to start to compete with each other? Because if I was a chief civil servant in the Dutch ministry of health or the Slovak ministry of health, I would too would want to be seen to be capturing the fashion of the age, the Zeitgeist of the age, and I would want as many green [referring to sl. [...] Look at The European Health 27 April 2005 Consumer of Tomorrow Page 16 of 18 Johan Hjertqvist, speaker A CNE.org transcript the way it looks in Arizona or wherever it is, and to me you must be respectful of the European values and traditions” and try to implement these “consumer” ideas within the European culture, meaning that you will ask for a different kind of relationship, meaning that you wil.