Securitization and Economization of hospitals – structural aspects of individual health care and their challenges
Abstract as pdf
Corresponding Author:
Alexander Roppelt
University of Tübingen Germany
alexander.roppelt@uni-tuebingen.de
Author(s):
The Covid-19 pandemic illustrates that hospitals are not merely institutions of individual health and care. Since early on last year claims were made internationally to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed by a rapid increase of the number of Covid patients. The protection of the health care institutions themselves seemed paramount for the protection of the diseased people infected by the novel virus. Hospitals were perceived as corner stones of the local health care systems, whose collapse poses a threat to national security, culminating in the iconic slogan to ‘flatten the curve’ as the overarching priority during the pandemic.
This talk is about the shift of attention from the individual health to the institutional or structural level in the context of hospitals. Without neglecting the interdependency of both, a stable and functioning health care structure forming the basis for modern individual health care, it explores the various effects this shift in focus can have. On the one hand it analyses this change based on securitization theory and global health security studies as a process of securitization of health in hospitals against the background of the pandemic. On the other hand it considers the shift in perspective as part as the process of economization of hospitals. Last but not least it examines the effects both tendencies have on each other as well as the ones they have all together.
The claim of this talk is that both processes, securitization and economization of hospitals, and the shift of focus they imply while not without other benefits tend to threaten people’s health on an individual level. It argues, that as a result of a conversion of means and ends, the initial end being the individual health and the institution being the means to provide it, the individual is likely to be disregarded. While the treatment of patients still remains the core function of hospitals, securitization and economization alters the structures, in which such treatments are conducted, and the decisions made surrounding them. As a consequence of this the context, in which health care can be given, is being reshaped.
Caring about and Care in Disasters: On Privileges, Marginalisation and the Making of Critical (Social) Infrastructure Protection