The 20th volume of Advances in Health Care Management showcases how health care management research helps to further understand grand challenges in health care: what they are, why they exist, the consequences that they have, and what can be done to address them.

Examines patterns of health reform in Nordic health care systems, and the balance between stability and change in how these systems have developed. This book investigates the health systems in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland through comparisons along a variety of policy-driven parameters.

The Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) estimates it will provide health care to 5.8 million patients with appropriations of $41.2 billion in FY 2009. The President has proposed an increase in VA's health care budget for FY 2010 to expand services for veterans. VA's patient population includes aging veterans who need services such as long-term care -- including nursing home and non-institutional care provided in veterans' homes or community -- and veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. This testimony discuss challenges related to VA's health care services budget formulation and execution, and focuses on: (1) challenges VA faces in formulating its health care budget; and (2) challenges VA faces in executing its health care budget.

Health care delivery in the United States is an enormously complex enterprise, and its $1.6 trillion annual expenditures involve a host of competing interests. While arguably the nation offers among the most technologically advanced medical care in the world, the American system consistently under performs relative to its resources. Gaps in financing and service delivery pose major barriers to improving health, reducing disparities, achieving universal insurance coverage, enhancing quality, controlling costs, and meeting the needs of patients and families. Bringing together twenty-five of the nation’s leading experts in health care policy and public health, this book provides a much-needed perspective on how our health care system evolved, why we face the challenges that we do, and why reform is so difficult to achieve. The essays tackle tough issues including: socioeconomic disadvantage, tobacco, obesity, gun violence, insurance gaps, the rationing of services, the power of special interests, medical errors, and the nursing shortage. Linking the nation’s health problems to larger political, cultural, and philosophical contexts, Policy Challenges in Modern Health Care offers a compelling look at where we stand and where we need to be headed.