Cooperaative Healthcare – utopia or best practive in p;ost-Covid era?

The Covid-19 pandemic underlines the combined risk of hospital staff burnout and the need for greater citizen participation in achieving public health goals. This panel explores whether the healthcare system that develops after the Covid-19 pandemic should focus on the staff and patients, profits or both? Recent research from Japan shows that more staff control over their daily work tasks promotes greater work satisfaction and more satisfied staff will, in turn, provide better quality services than dissatisfied staff. The former also have more interactions with their patients. It also considers three models for governing healthcare services: a democratic, multi-stakeholder model; a stewardship model and a more traditional ‘command and control’ model. Participatory governance allows the staff greater autonomy and control as well as promotes a multi-stakeholder dialogue that facilitates greater user/citizen participation. A stewardship model, combined with a 70-year public-social partnership, makes healthcare sustainable in sparsely populated areas, while a ‘command and control model’ provides few of these advantages. It concludes that both participatory governance and stewardship models can serve as a ‘best practice’ for public, private and nonprofit providers of healthcare in Japan and elsewhere (Pestoff, 2021). This workshop includes representatives from health cooperative movements in different parts of the world, including the HeWCoop and Koseiren from Japan, the Espriu Foundation from Spain, the Unimed health cooperative from Brazil and the International Health Cooperative Organization (IHCO) of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA). It also solicits the participation of researchers and representatives from health cooperatives elsewhere and welcomes comments and input from other interested parties around the world. Pestoff, Victor, 2021; Co-production and Japanese Healthcare. Work Environment, Governance, Service Quality and Social Values; New York & London: Routledge.