Healthcare 101

At the end of this week, my core class, Healthcare in Northern Europe, went on our short study tour across western Denmark. This trip combined academic visits with cultural excursions and was a really fun way to learn a lot about both healthcare in Denmark and its rich history. I am going to recap the trip, but I thought that a little Healthcare 101 might be necessary, and hopefully interesting. Plus, I have not been doing so much academic work lately and was missing it (kidding). 




Like the United States, the system is very complicated and especially hard to grasp from an outsiders perspective, but the objective of my class is to learn as much as we can. I'm really, really excited about this but I realize not everyone cares. Because I don't want your eyes to glaze over or put you to sleep, here is a brief summary.


Structure: Healthcare is decentralized and divided into the national, regional, and municipal. There are 5 regions and 98 municipalities within these 5 regions. 

• National: The Ministry of Health and Prevention coordinates and mandates healthcare laws.
• Regional: In charge of running hospitals, responsible for managing private sector care, and makes payments and contracts with General Practitioners.
• Municipal: Responsible for all public health care, home nursing, school health service, prevention and rehabilitation, and many social services. 

Care: General Practitioners (GP's) serve as gatekeepers to all other areas of healthcare. Each person in Denmark (including me!) is assigned a CPR card number (similar to a social security card) and a doctor to whom they see with any health concern. These GP's have a wide scope of practice: pediatrics, gynecology, and chronic disease management just to name a few. They care for a problem until their professional opinion states that a patient needs to see a specialist. This gatekeeper role is a key function in Danish healthcare, as they are extremely lacking in specialists and therefore need to manage (nice word for control) the number of patients seeing specialists. In order to get into a hospital, the patient needs to either have a emergency that cannot be controlled by a GP's phone advice or home visit, or be referred by a GP.


Payment: Money, money, money. As American's it seems that this is what we are most interested in. Well, in Denmark, healthcare is based around the principle of free and equal access for all. 85% of care is publicly funded. Healthcare accounts for 9.4% GDP in Denmark, as compared to bout 17% GDP in the United States. And most people in Denmark are satisfied with the healthcare they receive. Interesting...


Denmark went through a healthcare reform in 2007. The most important elements of this reform were that the number regions and municipalities was reduced and the waiting time to receive any treatment was capped at one month. This means that if the government cannot ensure that you receive a needed treatment (such as a hip replacement) within one month, they will pay for you to go to a private hospital. 


Whew. So there you have it: a very, very brief summary of the Danish Healthcare system. More to come on the study tour, but for now go eat a spoonful (or two, or three) of Nutella. It is World Nutella Day!