The European Hospital and Healthcare Federation (HOPE) is a European non profit association of Belgian status, created in 1966. HOPE includes national hospital associations or representatives from national hospital owners’ organisations of the 27 Member States of the European Union (as well as from Switzerland and the Republic of Serbia as observer members). HOPE members are covering almost 80% of hospital activity in the EU.
HOPE promotes improvements in the health of citizens throughout Europe. HOPE fosters efficiency, effectiveness and humanity in the organisation and operation of hospital and healthcare services.
Two major activities have been set up in HOPE since its creation: to develop and maintain information; to advise members.
HOPE has then been and is still involved in numerous comparative, exchange and dissemination activities:
- organisation of care activities: Organ transplants, Disaster Medicine, Quality of Hospital Care, Benchmarking, Emergency Care, ...
- economic and financing issues: DRGs, Rationing in Healthcare, Cost Containment, Alternatives to Hospitalisation, Healthcare as a growth factor, Health Care Data, ...
- human resources: European Workforce for Health, Hospitals and Occupational Health, Hospital Pharmacy, Nursing, Social Dialogue, ...
- organisation of health systems: Role of the Hospital, Accessibility and Solidarity in Health Care, Waiting lists ...
HOPE publishes documents, reports and books on topics describing the situation in the various EU Member States as well as recommendations for improvement. Since 1998, its official and yearly reference book is "Hospital Healthcare Europe."
With the development of comparative activities in the healthcare field, HOPE has been keen to create links with other organisations such as the OECD, the universities and research centres. It committed itself in research projects, some of them co-financed by the European Union.
