In 2018, international students in Manitoba were stunned to learn that once again they no longer had access to public healthcare. Through the lens of noncitizenship assemblage, this shift is reflective of the conditional access to entitlements experienced by precarious status migrants and the frames of deservingness structuring their presence in host countries. Critical Frame Analysis was used to examine Manitoba Hansard and media from 2007–2023 to understand how healthcare for international students in Manitoba was framed. Findings indicate three frames: one in which healthcare is framed as a human right, and the others in which healthcare is positioned as a market incentive or a gesture of inclusion, both meant to attract and retain students. Although we find there is advantage to adopting a frame that connects healthcare to economic contribution for actors seeking to expand access, it nevertheless ties access to government priorities, maintaining conditionality rather than securing rights.

Moral hazard is built into the structure of private equity investments, which incentivises debt-based extraction rather than value-adding investment. To craft effective regulation of private equity’s participation in healthcare, and to cut through the industry’s talking points, we must reframe and acknowledge private equity ‘investment’ as ‘extraction’. In the U.S. healthcare system, this debt-based extraction has produced higher risks of bankruptcy and financial distress and associated facility closures, cost-cutting that affects patient safety and care, rising healthcare costs, inefficient use of taxpayer dollars, erosion of clinician autonomy, and increased consolidation. Policies that address extractive behaviours are the most targeted and efficient means of safeguarding patient care and may discourage the worst actors from acquiring healthcare providers. As private equity invests in health systems beyond the U.S. where regulatory regimes differ, the fundamentals of its extractive business model remain the same. Regulations must be calibrated to country specifics, but they should address the debt-based extraction built into the very structure of private equity investments. As policy debates continue, it is worth asking why we need private equity’s extractive business model in healthcare in the first place.

Burnout refers to a psychological condition arising from prolonged and ongoing interpersonal stressors, resulting in physical and emotional exhaustion. Its prevalence among healthcare workers has been increasingly recognised as a significant factor affecting their mental health, well-being, performance at work, and professional and personal relationships, as well as the functioning of organisations. In this article we outline the general concept of burnout, its clinical features and measurement. We give an overview of its epidemiology among healthcare workers, and highlight the contribution of individual and organisational risk factors, cultural influences and work–life balance to its emergence and maintenance. We conclude with recommendations for identifying the signs and symptoms of burnout and for providing timely support and evidence-based interventions to reduce harm to both workers and the organisation. Effective management of burnout is key to retaining a healthy and productive workforce, while meeting the challenges of service delivery in healthcare in general and the National Health Service in particular.

Public policies are shaped not only by institutions and interests but also by interactions between policy construction and ideology, which define social problems, determine who is deserving, and set the boundaries of legitimate public provision. This study examines how these dynamics shape support for contested health services, asking how medicalization and social constructions of deservingness influence public attitudes. Using a survey experiment with 2,000 respondents in Canada, the analysis examines support for IVF, abortion, gender-affirming care, and HPV vaccination. Findings suggest that medicalization significantly increases support for public funding for select services, while constructions of deservingness mediate these effects. Policy feedback operates not only through institutional arrangements but also through how citizens perceive the boundaries of healthcare and the deservingness of recipients. The study advances research on policy feedback and health politics by showing how medicalization and social constructions shape public opinion and debates over medical necessity.

Recently a new type of generative artificial intelligence, agentic artificial intelligence, has been developed that extends product capabilities to act autonomously. Although agentic artificial intelligence systems offer a unique approach to supporting physicians, the products also pose many validity, privacy and security risks. Physicians need to understand the basic features of agentic artificial intelligence.

Experiences of healthcare services are an important indicator of quality and health system improvement. In correctional facilities, structural and contextual factors affect experiences of healthcare services and processes for voicing these experiences. This study explores barriers and opportunities for people in custody to voice their experiences of healthcare services in custody. We held four focus groups and one interview with people living in the community who had accessed, or tried to access, healthcare services while incarcerated in a provincial correctional facility in Ontario, Canada in the previous five years. Using template analysis, we developed four interacting themes related to expectations and experiences of healthcare, and of submitting complaints or asking for help: i) the system is not designed for healthcare, ii) gatekeeping and perceptions of ‘deserving’ healthcare, iii) impact of healthcare on other outcomes, and iv) calling the abyss. These factors affected perceptions of the potential efficacy of a patient feedback process, and how people in custody were likely to engage with it. Participants also identified five key features that should be components of any patient feedback processes. This study highlights challenges to patient-reported experiences of care in quality improvement work in restrictive environments and with incarcerated populations.

This paper examines how financial actors enter and reshape healthcare systems, building new, often transnational, social, technical, and financial infrastructures for organising and providing care. We use the concept of assetization – the transformation of ‘things’ into rent-generating assets for investors – to explore how financial actors appear within healthcare. Drawing on empirical case studies from England, Canada, and the Netherlands, we show how assetization unfolds differently across national contexts, shaped by political cultures, regulatory environments, and institutional legacies. Rather than deploying uniform strategies, financial actors respond strategically to systemic frictions and perceived crises, positioning themselves as problem-solvers and embedding investor logic into healthcare provision. As such, assetization is an active process that constructs new infrastructures facilitating future investment and normalising financial presence in healthcare. By tracing how an emerging investor logic reshapes the conditions that allow financial actors to turn healthcare into an asset across different socio-political and institutional contexts, and by tracing the mechanisms through which this logic is articulated and enacted, this paper reveals how care is increasingly integrated into broader circuits of financialization. In doing so, we raise critical questions about the evolving governance, valuation, and organisation of healthcare under expanding financial influence, pointing towards a future research agenda

The healthcare sector is a major consumer of plastics, with single-use gloves among the most frequently used items. Their use has increased significantly over recent decades, with the COVID-19 pandemic further accelerating this trend. Despite this, little is known about the drivers of glove consumption or how it might be reduced. This study examines the use of single-use plastic gloves in healthcare settings in two Scandinavian countries, drawing on interviews with 26 respondents, observational data, and document analysis. Findings reveal substantial overuse, misuse, and unnecessary disposal driven by behavioral norms, institutional practices, procurement routines, and product design. The study examines how circular strategies (R-strategies) can be applied to enhance the effective and efficient use of gloves, emphasizing the often-overlooked importance of the use phase. Behavioral change among staff emerges as more impactful than top-down policy alone, underscoring a gap between strategic goals and daily practices. The article identifies key opportunities and barriers to implementing circular solutions, offering insights relevant to researchers, healthcare professionals, procurement officers, and policymakers. Immediate practical implications center on adjusting staff routines and incentives, while further research is needed into mechanisms bridging the gap between environmental targets and medical professionals’ everyday decision-making.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has overwhelmed the Lithuanian healthcare system. In an attempt to meet its emergency situation and mitigate the new challenges, the Government reached out to the private sector, aiming to develop a sustainable cooperation approach in healthcare service provision. The article examines the potential implications for the healthcare system in Lithuania and adaptation paths. The preliminary overview refers to the assumption that the efforts to deliver sustainable service in the healthcare sector were uncoordinated and showed institutional vulnerability in both private and public sectors.

Cross-functional coordination is common in contemporary work and requires professionals with different expertise and roles to cooperate to complete tasks. However, conflicts can exist between functions. This study focuses on a specific factor that impedes cross-functional coordination – status–authority asymmetry, where professionals with lower status are assigned functional authority to supervise higher-status professionals and demand their compliance with particular processes or tasks. The existing literature suggests strategies for the low-status group to elicit the high-status group’s compliance; however, neither approach is cost-effective. We identify new opportunities in the digital age and investigate how low-status professionals can utilize digital technology to improve cross-functional coordination. We conducted a 17-month ethnographic study in a Chinese hospital to determine how low-status pharmacists obtain compliance from high-status doctors in the prescription review process. We propose that contingent exploitation (i.e., strategically restricted utilization of digital technology) is an effective strategy to achieve the low-status function’s purposes. Through strategic configuration of process streamlining, knowledge imprinting, and compliance enforcement, the low-status group can exert functional authority without evoking fierce resistance from the high-status group. This study contributes to the literature on cross-functional coordination and extends our understanding of technological adaptation in a cross-functional context.