The Tale of Nine Belgian Health Ministers and a Multi-level Fragmented Governance System: Six Guiding Principles to Improve Integrated Care, Responsiveness, Resilience and Equity; A Response to the Recent Commentaries

Document Type : Correspondence

Authors

1 Department of Public Health, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium

2 Department of Family Medicine and Population Health (FAMPOP), Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

Keywords

Full Text

In 2021, Martens et al published a paper presenting a comprehensive stakeholder analysis of three policy junctures in Belgium’s quest for improved integrated care (IC). The authors noted that Belgium’s “2014 partial decentralisation of healthcare has created fragmentation of decisive power which undermines efforts towards IC.”1 In five commentaries, academics, stakeholder representatives and frontline practitioners provided a kaleidoscopic view on the barriers hampering policy initiatives on IC.2-6 We first comment on the commentaries before taking a step back from the subject of IC and proposing guiding principles towards defragmenting the Belgian health system. ...(Read more...)

References

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  2. Gray CS. Overcoming political fragmentation: the potential of meso-level mechanisms: Comment on "Integration or fragmentation of health care? Examining policies and politics in a Belgian case study.” Int J Health Policy Manag. 2022. doi:34172/ijhpm.2022.7075
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History

  • Receive Date: 19 November 2022
  • Revise Date: 20 November 2022
  • Accept Date: 29 November 2022
  • First Publish Date: 30 November 2022

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