“The responsibility for financing, purchasing and providing all individual health services in Sweden is decentralised to 21 regions. Regionally and locally established taxes are the basis for revenue collection, but a national redistribution scheme is designed to equalise the capacity to provide health services across the country. The state is responsible for regulation and supervision. It provides additional funding through general block grants, earmarked funding for outpatient pharmaceuticals and specific national programmes. The regions increasingly undertake initiatives to work cooperatively to share investments and cluster services. This is often initiated and supported by the national government, for example when six regional cancer centres were founded in 2011 to improve prevention and service coordination in cancer care.”

Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2017), Sweden: Country Health Profile 2017, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264283572-en
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/sweden-country-health-profile-2017_9789264283572-en