Health care reform and financial crisis in the Netherlands: consequences for the financial arena of health care organizations

Over the past decade, many health care systems across the Global North have implemented elements of market mechanisms while also dealing with the consequences of the financial crisis. Although effects of these two developments have been researched separately, their combined impact on the governance of health care organizations has received less attention. The aim of this study is to understand how health care reforms and the financial crisis together shaped new roles and interactions within health care. The Netherlands – where dynamics between health care organizations and their financial stakeholders (i.e., banks and health insurers) were particularly impacted – provides an illustrative case. Through semi-structured interviews, additional document analysis and insights from institutional change theory, we show how banks intensified relationship management, increased demands on loan applications and shifted financial risks onto health care organizations, while health insurers tightened up their monitoring and accountability practices towards health care organizations. In return, health care organizations were urged to rearrange their operations and become more risk-minded. They became increasingly dependent on banks and health insurers for their existence. Moreover, with this study, we show how institutional arenas come about through both the long-term efforts of institutional agents and unpredictable implications of economic and societal crises.