Smart Regulation: Can New Types of Governance Improve Health?

The symposium examines how new forms of regulation and governance affect prospects for health systems change and improvement. New governance includes a wide variety of processes but all differ from top-down, command and control style regulation.

Recent examples of new governance in action include public-private partnerships in electronic record adoption, public disclosure of hospital infection rates in Europe, standardized metrics for cancer treatment, and private rulemaking in organ transplantation. These innovations feature a participatory model of regulation in which multiple stakeholders collaborate to achieve a common purpose.

Scholars from the United States and the European Union in the fields of health services research, clinical medicine, political science, public affairs, law and social work will present and comment on papers addressing the prospects for new forms of governance in many areas of the health system.