Cost-Containment Policies in Hospital Expenditure in the European Union

Summary:

Public expenditure on health absorbs a significant and growing share of EU countries' resources. With hospital care being the core expenditure item of health systems, political focus on successful cost containment policies in this sector has been at least sustained, if not increased in the past decade. Looking forward, projections of health expenditure point towards sustained fiscal challenges related to rising health care costs. This surely implies for hospitals that they will be targeted also in future as an area for cost containment and increased efficiency, while having to ensure high quality of service provision to all patients.

The paper summarises documented evidence on a number of policies to contain costs in the hospital sector. Often, hard scientific evidence on the impact of policy tools is not documented, and historical evidence serves as a guide in many cases to gauge the likely impact of a specific tool on cost containment.

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