Patient involvement in Danish health care.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate different types of patient involvement in Denmark, and to discuss the potential implications of pursuing several strategies for patient involvement simultaneously. The paper presents a preliminary framework for analysis of patient involvement in health care. This framework is used to analyze key governance features of patient involvement in Denmark based on previous research papers and reports describing patient involvement in Danish health care. Patient involvement is important in Denmark at the rhetorical level, and many policies and initiatives have been introduced. All three governance forms (voice, choice and co-production) are used. However, there are important barriers and limitations in translating the rhetoric into practice, and potential synergy and negative synergy effects can be identified when pursuing the strategies at the same time. Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed framework further. The paper includes implications for the development of patient involvement in health care. This paper fulfills a need to study different types of patient involvement and to develop a theoretical framework for characterizing and analyzing such involvement strategies.