Minister of Health Gudlaugur Thór Thórdarson has proposed that Iceland’s healthcare system shall be changed to be more in line with the healthcare systems of the other Nordic countries to make its operations more efficient.
According to Fréttabladid, the minister’s ideas involve that a special purchasing center will separate buyers and sellers within the system, which will make it more transparent.
“This change is much needed, for example at the National Hospital […], to define better what is being paid for and how,” Thórdarson said. The goal is to establish a purchasing center which could begin operating late next year.
The buyer would be the state, which would pay for surgeries and other services, and the sellers would mostly be state-run institutions like the National Hospital.
The change would involve a new party in between, the purchasing center, which would negotiate the purchase of healthcare services. Patients are thus expected to have more options.
“The underlying goal is to have an even better healthcare service than we have now. The change is not radical. We are looking to the countries we usually compare ourselves with, especially Sweden, in order to learn from them,” the minister explained.
