Table 3.

Absorptive hospital financing policies against the economic crisis

Theme	Sub-themes	Measures	Countries
Reducing Hospitals Funds	Reducing hospital budget and government spending	Budget reduction	Czech Republic [10], Slovenia [10], Austria [10], United States [77], Greece [39], Finland [34]
	Change in the way of budget allocation	Establishing a Unified Yearly Global Budget for all hospitals	Greece [45]
		Upper limits for budgets allocation	China [26]
	Decreasing payment rates of payment systems	Reducing DRG prices	France [10]
		Upper limits for insurance reimbursements	China [26]
		Lowered tariffs paid to providers	Estonia [10], Ireland [10], Romania [10], Slovenia [10], England [31]
		Direct reduction in growth rate of payment	Luxemburg [10], Netherlands [10]
Saving Hospital Funds	Controlling expenditures	Controlling main costs groups in hospitals	Bulgaria [24], Greece [35, 39], England [30], Portugal [30]
	Controlling hospitals investments	Reduction and cancelation of hospital investments/ constructions	United States [79, 85, 93], Romania [10], Spain [10], UK [10],
		Value based purchasing	United States [85]
		Joint purchasing	Greece [45]