The media's coverage and framing of hospital reforms: The case of Denmark

The Danish hospital landscape has been continuously restructured since the early 2000s. A structural reform reorganized the public sector, and a hospital reform restructured the hospital landscape, closing hospitals and concentrating specialized treatment in so-called super-hospitals. Reforms can generate considerable debate, including in the media, especially regarding sensitive topics like healthcare. The present study explores the media's coverage of the hospital reform, the antecedent structural reform, and three events related to differences in treatment outcomes, whose importance was pointed out in expert interviews. The coverage is analyzed regarding quantity and main theme (agenda-setting): tone and whether the focus was on single events (episodic framing) or broader context (thematic framing). We used a systematic keyword search to identify relevant news stories and analyzed the headlines and lead paragraphs of 1192 news stories. The three events generated a large amount of coverage, but some events varied in terms of context and tone of coverage. Further, the media covered hospital closures in connection with the two reforms differently in context and tone, although the first difference is not statistically different. Overall, the coverage of the events might have helped raise the public's awareness of challenges in the healthcare system, which could have contributed to opening a window of opportunity for a hospital reform.