BACKGROUND Globally, health expenditure as a percentage of GDP has increased in recent years, so evaluating the health care systems used in different countries is an important tool for identifying best practices and improving inefficient health care systems. OBJECTIVE We investigate health system efficiency at the country level based on OECD health data. We focus on several aspects of health ...

While the achievements of the Organisation for Economic CoOperation and Development (OECD) Health Care Quality Indicators (HCQI) Project [1] are laudable and enable international comparisons of health care systems in terms of a particular type of quality, it is important to remember that quality is not value neutral. As Donabedian pointed out, 1981, explicit measures of quality carry with them ...

OBJECTIVE To collect, compile and evaluate publicly available national health accounts (NHA) reports produced worldwide between 1996 and 2010. METHODS We downloaded country-generated NHA reports from the World Health Organization global health expenditure database and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) StatExtract website. We also obtained reports from Abt Assoc...

A greater focus on the role of health systems in health, development, and economic growth has led health policy research and analysis, domestic and global, to scrutinize health financing, insurance, and financial protection. Two World Health Reports (2000 and 2010) [1,2] have called for evaluating health system performance in terms of health financing, and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) ...

BACKGROUND Rankings from the World Health Organization (WHO) place the US health care system as one of the least efficient among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Researchers have questioned this, noting simplistic or inappropriate methodologies, poor measurement choice, and poor control variables. Our objective is to re-visit this question by using newer m...

A healthy workforce is critical to the success of an organization or a society. Properly managing the delivery of health care is thus an important function of modern health care systems. However, health care delivery today is rife with waste and inefficiency. Kohn et al. (2000) estimated 50,000 to 100,000 lives are lost each year because of medical errors. Schoen et al. (2006) found that 42 per...

BACKGROUND This paper contributes to research in health systems literature by examining the role of health boards in hospital governance. Health care ranks among the largest public sectors in OECD countries. Efficient governance of hospitals requires the responsible and effective use of funds, professional management and competent governing structures. In this study hospital governance practice...

OBJECTIVES To compare average levels of population health for Australia and other OECD countries in 2001. METHODS Healthy life expectancies (HALE) for OECD countries for 2001 are based on analysis of mortality data for OECD countries, country-specific estimates of health state prevalences for 135 causes from the Global Burden of Disease 2000 study, and an analysis of 34 health surveys in 28 O...