Abstract:

Western health care is undergoing deep transformation. Its direction and contents are contested and ambiguous. While hierarchical and market-driven models are the most widely used alternatives to organize the mass production of medical services, there is also an emerging direction that seeks team- and network-based models to achieve collaborative communities in health care organizations, often crossing institutional boundaries and creating new forms of interorganizational partnerships

What is needed is historical and contextual sensitivity to the broad patterns of organizing health care that penetrate and shape discourse. In the articles of this special issue, the distinction between professional dominance and organizational or institutional policy plays an important role.

Author: Yrjö Engeström