During the pandemic, we have gained
positive experience with Public-Private Partnerships
Jakob Riis: What key strengths do you consider important and which areas need to be further improved to sustain the competitiveness of Denmark?
Stephanie Lose: Overall, I consider it important to sustain one of the strengths and core values of our society: Trust. This is particularly relevant in times with fake news, possible mistrust in democracy etc. The health care sector in Denmark is a position of strength that holds potential for export of knowledge, products and services – in particular, if we can overcome the challenges that the change in demographic composition poses.
I experience increasing expectations from the citizens to the healthcare market - to the core service as well as the overall customer experience from a to z with regards to a lot of parameters, for instance flexibility and availability. This is accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic and also the reason why we have to develop our healthcare system. During the pandemic, we have gained positive experience with Public-Private Partnerships. We should extract the most important learnings and use these as the foundation for developing the competitiveness of Denmark and ensure future growth.
In the Danish Regions, we find it important to adopt a public health law serving as a political framework and lift the bar to create a healthier and more sustainable Denmark. It would be the basis for promoting health as a priority across all policies, welfare areas, state, municipalities, and regions. Furthermore, it would improve prevention efforts to the next level and increase equality in health.
I also find the second-generation reforms initiated by the government last year important as a continued strong welfare requires us to continue competing on knowledge, great ideas, and well-functioning businesses in order to create even better jobs in Denmark. The ability to demonstrate a strong home market position for Danish service companies is important to be able to compete globally.
Historically, welfare improvements have primarily been driven by an increased productivity. However, productivity growth has slowed in recent decades, both in Denmark and a number of other Western countries.
Within healthcare, we have to strengthen the use of technology and innovation
Jakob Riis: The need to strengthen the resilience of the healthcare system has been pointed out by several, among others the European Commission that also flags a particular concern regarding the shortage of health workers. They stress that continuous efforts to address the labor shortages is key. How do you see this?
Stephanie Lose: I share the concern for the shortage in the public healthcare sector. I see a need to address this in new ways, besides adding more hands. Especially as the shortages might differ between various geographies. Technology is one way, innovation another.
The most recent OECD Digital Government Index (DGI) places Denmark in the top when it comes to various countries' efforts to digitize and improve the public sector. This is due to our early focus, determination and also willingness to invest. But we still need to do more when it comes to public digitisation. The DGI underlines this as Denmark ranks 12th in the dimension of Government as Platform, reflecting the extent to which we work with strategies and tools that enable collaboration between different authorities' digital platforms.
Lastly, I find it important to find a way to make health data more accessible for the public and private sector in order to enhance the healthcare services. This requires more interpretation and analysis of data.
Jakob Riis: So, if you were to summarise with a piece of advice to the Danish Government on how to strengthen our competitive advantage, what would that be?
Stephanie Lose: To strengthen our competitiveness, I would provide the following advice:
- Reinforce Public-Private Partnerships
- Within healthcare, we have to strengthen the use of technology and innovation and in particular ease the difficulty of accessing health data.
