Economic Rationalities and Notions of ‘Good Cure and Care’

Abstract

The development of the health care system in Switzerland has recently been driven by different processes such as economic rationalization, bureaucratization, or digitalization, while maintaining professional notions of ‘good cure and care.’ Drawing on qualitative data from a Swiss acute hospital, we analyze how potentially market driven modes of governance manifest themselves in the everyday activities of nurses and physicians. We show how professional understandings of ‘good cure and care’ remain persistent and intermingle with logics that we call economic rationalities, manifesting in the four interrelated issues of financial pressure, bureaucratization, time pressure, and staff shortage.