Competition and integration in health care reform

Abstract

There is a growing but still fragile understanding that competition and integration are not necessarily in conflict and can be used together. In one version, this might mean using competition to drive improvements in performance in planned care, and promoting integration to do so in relation to unplanned care and care for people with complex needs. In another, it entails arguing that competition between integrated systems might offer the best of all worlds, if policies can be designed to support evolution in that direction. This paper suggests that a bundle of policy interventions is needed to support the evolution of integrated systems of care. It examines how policies might be crafted to make this happen; How to avoid the wrong kind of integration to develop; and, how can policy-makers enable competition between integrated systems.