Health: Improving healthcare is vital for long-term growth

With austerity the order of the day in most OECD countries, the public is understandably anxious that budget cuts do as little harm as possible to the services they depend on. Few sectors capture the dilemmas this poses for policymakers quite like healthcare.

Health: Good healthcare at good prices

Health ministers from OECD countries met in Paris to discuss how to meet urgent short-term fiscal concerns without sacrificing the quality and availability of health care, either now or in the future.

Obesity and the Economics of Prevention: Fit not Fat

This book contributes to evidence-based policy making by exploring multiple dimensions of the obesity problem.

Related Documents

• Obesity Update
• The Economics of Prevention
• Health Publications
• Health Policies
• Third Lancet Series on Chronic Diseases

Executive Summary - Obesity and the Economics of Prevention

Obesity is a major health concern for OECD countries. Using a wide range of individual-level and population data from OECD countries, this book presents analyses of trends in obesity, explores the complex causal factors affecting the epidemic and develops an assessment of the impacts interventions to combat the problem.

No. 53 - Comparing Price Levels of Hospital Services Across Countries: Results of Pilot Study

Health services account for a large and increasing share of production and expenditure in OECD countries but there are also noticeable differences between countries in expenditure per capita. Whether such differences are due to more services consumed in some countries than in others or whether they reflect differences in the price of services is a question of significant policy relevance. Yet, cross-country comparisons of the price of

Improving Health Sector Efficiency

This report presents an analysis of OECD countries’ efforts toimplement information and communication technologies (ICTs) in healthcare systems.

OECD Health Working Paper No. 49: The Challenge of Financing Health Care in the Current Crisis: An Analysis based on the OECD Data

The ratio of health expenditure to GDP, which in macroeconomic terms is an indicator which summarises the financing needs of a national health system, is likely to rise in countries for which the GDP falls. This paper reviews the possible implications of the recessions for this ratio.

OECD Health Working Paper No. 50: Health Systems Institutional Characteristics: A Survey of 29 OECD Countries

In 2008, the OECD launched a survey to collect information on the health systems characteristics of member countries. This paper presents the informaton provided by 29 of these countries in 2009.

OECD Health Working Paper No. 51: Effective Ways to realise Policy Reforms in Health Systems

This paper is based on evidence from the countries which have seen their health systems reviewed by the OECD in recent years. It considers four issues in particular, these being the ones used across all the different reform areas covered by the Making Reform Happen project

International Migration of Health Workers (Policy Brief)

Because the international migration of doctors and nurses has become increasingly visible, it is often seen as the main culprit behind these shortages.