The patient as a policy problem: Ambiguous perceptions of a critical interface in healthcare

The interface between the patient and the health service has changed, which constitutes a potential problem for various policy-makers. Using a critical policy perspective and drawing on the theory of problem framing, this paper explores how actor groups with different responsibilities perceive the patient as a constructed policy problem. This is a qualitative study where data consists of single episode interviews with healthcare politicians, senior administrators, service strategists, and unit mangers from one regional health authority in Sweden. A thematic content analysis of the interviews was carried out in accordance with “the framework approach”. The study illustrates how the actors interpret their reality using diverse problem frames. This becomes more visible when the framing is disentangled with regard to what perspective they employ in relation to different accounts: society or the individual, or the (healthcare) system or the (healthcare) professional. The actor groups are part of the same institutional context, which explains certain tendencies of similarities in terms of the accounts being used, but still they approach the constructed problem differently which is visible as shifts—scaling up and down—between different accounts. By analyzing and structuring the various problem frames (including its policy styles) we can enhance our knowledge about how those responsible for the governance of healthcare approach the patient as a policy problem, as something that concerns only the patient and/or the provider, or as something that needs to be addressed in broader strategic terms.