National services in the specialist health care services

The Norwegian governance system for national units was introduced in 2011 in order to establish a holistic and dynamic management and strengthened governance of national services.

The major goal of the system is to ensure high quality of and equal access to highly specialized treatment and expertise, and to secure the rational use of resources at the national level.

National treatment services consist of highly specialized treatment that should be centralized to one or two institutions in the country in order to be able to provide high quality services and competence.

National competence services are established in areas where there is a lack of expertise. The service shall ensure the development of national expertise and competence within a specified discipline/disease/treatment, and are responsible for the dissemination of this knowledge to all health regions and entire health service, to patients and the population in general within a period of 5 or 10 years.

Equal access to national services is ensured by amongst other initiatives requiring the establishment of reference groups with representatives from all regional health authorities and user representation.

The Regulation for approval of hospitals, use of the term university hospital, and national services within the specialist health service regulates (PDF) the national services.