During this very interesting dialog four decision makers of the health care and social system talked about the quality of the health care system and how to finance these in the near and long-term future.

Mr. Zerzer, S-Tirol, gave us an insight into the Italian health care system, which is relatively centralized in comparison to the Austrian multi level financing.

Within the Austrian model it is pretty hard to change the structure of the health care system, where the regions the insurances and the state periodically have mutually exclusive goals.

As Mr Webhofer, Tirol, mentioned: “As a regional policy maker you have regional interests. But due to the regional interests you sometimes prohibit process on a national level”.

The ÖSG (Austrian Strukturplan Gesundheit) is one of the biggest national efforts to harmonize the regional and local system and to rise its quality, but its implementation is still unsatisfying.

For Mr. Zsifkovits, expert in HTA, one kind of an operation should have one price all over Austria and should not differ from federal state to federal state.

But changes will hardly be possible as long as there are so many actors and stake-holders having different interests in the health care system, mentioned Mr. Günthert, expert in health-economy.

The general conclusion was that for the sake of higher quality and moderate costs there has a lot to be done in the Austrian and the Italian health care system.

Mag. Thomas Pöchtrager, Mentee 2009/10, Club Alpbach Medica