Introduction

Abstract

This short chapter sets the stage for the remainder of the book by presenting a number of key underlying aspects. Firstly, it explains the reasons to conduct health services research in Central and Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Republics. Secondly, it states the book’s objectives and lays out its structure. Thirdly, it provides an overview of the region’s geography and familiarises the reader with terms and concepts used throughout the book.

The motives that led to this study include the geopolitical importance of the post-communist region, its historical development which constitutes a quasi-social experiment and the identification of unexplored aspects of health-care transition. These opportunities are accompanied by challenges which stem from both a complex nature health and health care as well as from idiosyncratic institutional features of the post-Semashko systems.

The above considerations support the objective of this study: enhancing our understanding of changes that the post-communist health care systems have experienced in the spheres of hospital autonomy, ownership and legal forms, all of which are defining elements of hospital governance. Consequently, the original contributions of this book are in describing the patterns in region-wide transformation of the hospital sector, presenting distinct economic characteristics of the elements of the transformation and completing the discussion with statistical evidence of effects on hospital sector performance.