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Country profiles of health system responses to the crisis | Denmark
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• The Ministry of Health conducted a major restructuring of the central health
agencies and subsequent budget cuts, as part of a general state programme to
cut costs of public administration (2012):
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the number of organizational units at the Ministry was reduced from
three to two and division of tasks was aligned with other agencies;
between 10 and 25% of the employees of the Ministry and related health
agencies were laid off (a total of 140 employees, with the highest relative
lay-offs at the Ministry);
the Danish Medicines Agency was merged with the National Board of
Health creating the new Health and Medicines Agency;
The National Board of e-Health was merged with the Statens Serum
Institut; and
The Knowledge and Research Centre for Alternative Medicine was closed.
Provider infrastructure and capital investment
• Planned to invest DKK 40 billion in the building and improvement of
hospitals (2007). The government set aside DKK 25 billion in 2007 and
in 2010 the regions agreed to invest the remainder. These investments are on
track.
• Acceleration of the ongoing centralization (hospital and department closures)
in order to achieve economies of scale and reduce maintenance costs (2008
onwards).
• Acceleration of ongoing improvements in information technology in the
health sector (2008 onwards).
• Facilitation of public–private partnerships by loosening state control over
regional agreements for these. For example, regions and municipalities were
relieved of the obligation to provide 100% of financing costs for new public–
private partnership projects, up to total of DKK 300 million nationally
(2013). An agreement was made to build a new mental health facility in
southern Denmark as a public–private partnership (2012).
Priority setting or protocols to change access to treatments, coordination
of care and patterns of use
• Ongoing discussions took place on the establishment of a national
prioritization institute (2010–2011), but no agreement had been reached.
Instead, a decision was made to establish a broader research institute (covering
all welfare sectors and providing evaluations and policy advice) by merging
three existing research and assessment institutes for welfare services (including
health care) under the name KORA (2012).