This article refers to the worldwide gap between research and practice. The use of so-called applied academic centres as a possible way to bridge this gap is proposed. Within academic centres, the university, on the one hand, and treatment and (public) health and social welfare services, on the other, together invest in a long-term partnership. A long-term research program and a knowledge-exchange structure are developed. The authors have established these kinds of centres in different fields such as, among others, the field of public health, the field of mental health and the field of social welfare. These centres may differ in important characteristics including the number of organisations involved and the form in which the collaboration is organised. These differences make valuable comparisons possible. A plea is made for further research towards the usefulness of applied academic health centres in promoting evidence-based work within treatment and public health and social work services.

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One of the major goals of the recent NHS reforms has been to make the NHS more responsive to the needs of patients by offering more choice. DHAs and budget‐holding GP practices have been given an incentive to obtain better value for money in purchasing health care services. In doing so they will have to take account of the existing GP referral patterns for as “key advisers” GPs can have major influence on patients′ choice of hospitals and consultants. Until now not much has been known about the structure, development and change of referral patterns and the factors responsible for changes. A study concerning these issues, conducted in The Netherlands, provides relevant information for the British situation. The results (non‐specificity of referrals, the role of tradition and distance in building up referred relationships and patients′ influence on breaking up relationships) suggest that GPs′ decisions in building up and changing referral networks take place implicitly. Concludes that GPs need more information in order to choose the best option. Information exchange within GP practices or local/regional GP groups is a means of improving the basis for decision making. At the same time there is a growing need for research into cost/quality ratios of care offered by health care providers. In Britain, DHAs could play an important role in initiating and intensifying this research.

One of the basic assumptions of governmental health planning policy is that the government can effectively take final responsibility for the development of the health care system. Failure to reach policy goals is explained in terms of inadequate planning technology and instruments to control implementation. In this article an alternative explanation is offered, based on the theory of strategic organizational behavior. According to this theory, the government must be seen as but one actor in a complex interorganizational network. From this, a different perspective on effective health planning policy is developed. Policies will fail if they are not based on a valid analysis of the policy space of health care institutions and the interdependencies between government and health care organizations. This article starts with an outline of the nature of the central-local relationship as seen from the perspective of strategic organizational behavior theory. Next, this theory is used to frame two cases in which Dutch health care institutions successfully pursued their own strategies that ran counter to the existing health planning policies. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of the theory of strategic organizational behavior for the development of effective central health care policies. This development starts with a thorough analysis of the policy space and interdependencies of all relevant actors in the health system, the government included. Following, policy makers can set the governmental goals and then have to start negotiations with health care institutions about mutual adaptation of their strategies and the governmental goals. The result is a negotiated health care order.