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September 12, 2002  
The Health Care Revolution in StockholmThe health care revolution in Stockholm (download pdf) is a 56 page booklet in which Johan Hjertqvist describes developments during the past ten years of change. This small publication is the first English-language introduction to the Stockholm County Council’s full-scale experiment in systematic change.The Swedish welfare state has attracted international interest ever since the 1930’s. For 50 years the name of the game was an expanding political and administrative power. Now the opposite goes – to increase the freedom of consumers, employees, and entrepreneurs, thereby re-shaping the strategy of welfare service distribution. Here the Stockholm region is ahead of other parts of Sweden. The Stockholm County Council is attempting to transform public health care from an old-style, politically administered monopoly to the consumer-related, incentive-driven network of tomorrow. It is a change by many small steps, a strategy for implanting modern incentives into a public structure. It sends signal of change to other countries, inspiring for example the Blair government to re-shape the NHS. The health care system of Stockholm remains publicly funded, with open and equal access for every inhabitant, but the Council also contracts many privately owned operators to deliver the services. But a choice will have to be made: between maintaining an exclusively public funding or accepting a mix. Will Sweden be able to carry the taxes needed to safeguard public funding? Whatever the outcome, the future health care network of solutions will have to be very flexible and made to meet the increasing individual consumer demand.  Related Items:
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Johan Hjertqvist is the founder and president of the Health Consumer Powerhouse in Brussels, the European do-tank for better healthcare by consumer information and knowledge. Before the Powerhouse, Mr. Hjertqvist was the manager of Timbro Health Policy Unit, a division of the Timbro Policy Group in Stockholm, Sweden. Mr. Hjertqvist has a background in health care policy and welfare entrepreneurial activities. Beginning in 1999 he led a four-year project to analyze the transformation of health care in the Stockholm region which resulted in three comprehensive reports. His “The Stockholm Health Care Revolution” published in 2000 is an internationally well-known inspiration to reform. During the 1990’s, Mr. Hjertqvist played an active role in the transition of internal market ideas to a number of countries, UK, Norway and Canada not the least. Mr. Hjertqvist has also acted as an advisor to the Greater Stockholm Council, specializing in market infrastructures where purchasers and providers can meet and the focus of his projects between 1995 – 99 was on creating new arenas where private health care entrepreneurs and contractors could come together to strengthen the impact of market pluralism. Mr. Hjertqvist has a Master of Laws degree from the University of Stockholm and is a member of international health care networks and institutions such as the Stockholm Network in London and the Centre for the New Europe in Brussels and also serves on the Board of Research Advisors at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
