Hospitals in a globalized world: a view from Canada

Globalization is a complex, multidimensional phenomenon that has already influenced the way hospitals operate and will increasingly impact the healthcare landscape and patients' experience worldwide. This paper briefly analyzes the direct and indirect effects of globalization on healthcare systems and services, mainly focusing on the experience of academic health sciences centres. Building their analysis on the belief that globalization is neither negative nor positive in itself, the authors compare alternative definitions of globalization, suggest possible ways in which it could impact health systems, examine how the role of large teaching and research institutions could evolve over the next decade or so, and put forward some fundamental questions faced by healthcare institutions. In the first part of the paper, the complex and multidimensional nature of globalization is analyzed and the highly polarized debate on the nature of this phenomenon briefly summarized. The second part focuses on the effects of globalization on health and healthcare. A pre-existing conceptual framework is used to analyze the complex linkages between globalization and health, and alternative scenarios are presented to illustrate the current and potential effects of international trade policies and regulations on health systems. In the third part, changes in hospitals' structure, organization and functions triggered by globalization and the introduction of new information and communication technologies are examined. The analysis is built around five main elements: patients, human resources, capital, information and funding. Finally, the paper highlights some of the most fundamental challenges, both practical and ethical, that healthcare institutions have to face in the transition to a new era of globalized health services.