Challenges of Healthcare Systems in the Era of COVID-19

The organizations operating in the healthcare sector have experienced two dramatic years since the end of February 2020. They have been the main of every possible response to the pandemic. Never before the functioning of these organizations has been so crucial for the lives of individuals and society as a whole, consequently they have had to endure an unprecedented level of operating pressure and stakeholder expectations. The Covid-19 public health crisis has raised questions about many of the estab-lished models of governance, management and organization, highlighting their limits and contradictions. At the same time, however, the crisis has also been the driving force behind the development of new services and the rethinking of management models. In this perspective we can expect a future of significant reforms and organizational and managerial change. Strengthening health and welfare systems is consequently a shared challenge for all the European countries, but particularly for the Balkans and Eastern ones, where the pandemic has accelerated the transformation process. It makes valuable to compare the choices made by different European countries, starting with Italy, which was the first to face the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to learn from the best experiences and practices. The common goal of Countries is indeed a more efficient and responsive healthcare system to better address future pandemics as other ongoing issues. For this reason, the reconfiguration of European, Balkan and Eastern European healthcare systems is being supported, in some cases, by the significant resources, made available by the EU for the post-pandemic development. It is undoubtedly an opportunity to fill the existing gaps in the infrastructures devoted to the provision of the health services and to take advantage of healthcare reforms for the development of systems and organizations. This special issue includes papers relating to the role that Economics and Manage-ment can play in supporting healthcare reforms with particular reference to the Central and South Eastern European countries. From this perspective, this special issue of the EBEEC Conference allows us to deepen and discuss, on the one hand, the important impact that the pandemic has had on healthcare organizations and on the other hand, the lessons that can be learned from this crisis in terms of managerial practice. The 14th International conference “Economies of the Balkan and Eastern Euro-pean Countries (Ebeec)”, held in Florence in May 2022, has been organized jointly in Florence, by the Experimental and Clinical Medicine Department of the University of Florence (Italy) and the Finance and Accounting Department of the International Hellenic University, Kavala (Greece). The conference brought together more than 130 manuscripts and by more 150 authors from 20 countries from Europe and all over the world. A broad range of issues have been discussed at the conference and in the resulting published books. Aim of the conference was to gather scholarship and practitioners who presented academic papers and to exchange theoretical and empirical results, on issue in economics and management on healthcare with a specific focus on the future reforms due to COVID 19 pandemics. The papers presented draw, upon the experiences of Central and Western Europe, particularly of Italy, among the countries where the pandemic was first detected, and provides a specific focus on Central and Southeastern European. This volume, as one of the publications resulting from the 14th Interna-tional conference “Economies of the Balkan and Eastern European Countries (EBEEC)”—Florence, Italy, May 2022, aims to present original research paper in the specific field of Healthcare Economics and Management. The entire manuscript selection process was managed by the Board of Editors in compliance with the highest standards and best practice guidelines on publishing ethics, paying special attention to issues regarding plagiarism, peer-review, objec-tivity, funding, privacy, and conflict of interest. All selected manuscripts have gone through a blind peer-review process. Selected papers are independent and do not constitute joint research. The volume includes 17 selected manuscripts presented at the aforementioned Conference. The book consists of three parts. Part focuses on Policies, Governance and Strategies, part is dedicated to Financing and Performance and part is relative to Operations.