Roadmap For Sustainable Healthcare

Roadmap To Sustainable Healtcare

The European Steering Group (ESG) on Sustainable Healthcare, under the chairpersonship of former Health Minister of Ireland, Mary Harney, brings together expertise from the policy community, civil society, healthcare professionals, scientific societies, academics and industry.
The ESG has taken a unique and proactive approach to address the sustainability of European healthcare systems. Rather than create another “think tank”, the ESG has created a “do tank” across 21 European countries. In each country, strong multi-stakeholder partnerships and working groups have been formed to reflect on and devise solutions to the key challenges facing national or regional healthcare systems.
Concrete pilot projects are being implemented on a local level across Europe, with a view to scaling these up for the benefit of patients and healthcare systems at a broader level. This joint effort has seen more than 30 pilots launched under three main work streams:
1. Investing in prevention and early intervention
2. Fostering empowered and responsible citizens
3. Reorganising care delivery.
By assessing concrete evidence and best practice examples across Europe (and beyond), the ESG formulated 18 policy recommendation, launched in the pan-European White Paper ‘Acting Together A Roadmap for Sustainable Healthcare’ at the EU level in 2015.
In 2016, the project moved in to Chapter Two. Going forward, the ESG will focus on one of its key policy recommendations – cross-ministry collaborations and joint projects. The ESG believes that given the close interaction between different sectors – such as health, social welfare, and employment – cross-sectoral collaboration will become essential for the achievement of various policy goals, as well as for the maximisation of value.