Reports

This review of health care quality in Denmark examines policies related to quality and includes chapters covering primary and integrated care, hospital specialisation and equity. It finds that with a dense array of disease- and service-focused quality initiatives, and with information on the quality of care stored in separate data repositories, Denmark needs to create effective links and synergies between them to drive up quality in the healthcare system as a whole, rather than in disconnected elements.

Primary care will be central in meeting Denmark’s future healthcare challenges of an ageing population with multiple chronic conditions. Therefore, an urgent need is to create a national vision of how a modernised primary care sector will fulfill this new coordination role. National standards, clinical guidelines, accreditation of clinical pathways and targeted financial incentive programmes could support this role, along with more transparent and formalised continual professional development.

To facilitate quality improvement from the ambitious hospital rationalisation, Denmark should collect and disseminate data on the quality of individual physicians as well as the hospitals. Undergraduate training and medical research should be reviewed in light of the new service arrangements.  Close surveillance will be needed to monitor whether certain patient groups forego healthcare because travel times to providers are too long. Limited data availability complicate Denmark’s ability to monitor its commitment to equitable healthcare. There is an urgent need for renewed action to tackle risk factors of chronic ill-health that disproportionately affect low-income groups. Better information on the impact of user-charges on unmet need in low-income groups is needed.    

Governments are major issuers of debt instruments in the global financial market. This volume provides quantitative information on central government debt instruments for the 34 OECD member countries to meet the analytical requirements of users such as policy makers, debt management experts and market analysts.  Statistics are presented according to a comprehensive standard framework to allow cross-country comparison.  Country methodological notes provide information on debt issuance in each country as well as on the institutional and regulatory framework governing debt management policy and selling techniques.

Tackling mental ill-health of the working-age population is becoming a key issue for labour market and social policies in OECD countries. OECD governments increasingly recognise that policy has a major role to play in keeping people with mental ill-health in employment or bringing those outside of the labour market back to it, and in preventing mental illness. This report on Denmark is the third in a series of reports looking at how the broader education, health, social and labour market policy challenges identified in Sick on the Job? Myths and Realities about Mental Health and Work (OECD, 2012) are being tackled in a number of OECD countries. It concludes that the Danish system has a number of strengths that have yet to be used in a more effective way, but also that quite a few changes are needed in order to raise the labour market particiption of people with mental ill-health.

Denmark is a leader among OECD member countries in terms of its well-designed policies for renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate change. The country is a forthright voice in international fora for climate policy and a strong advocate of tougher climate-change mitigation measures. A long history of consensus-based policy making and political stability has been leveraged to develop Denmarkfs far-reaching and comprehensive energy policies, and also allowed a clear long-term vision to emerge. 

Denmarkfs long-term energy goal is to become completely independent of fossil fuels use by 2050. In 2011, the government published the Energy Strategy 2050, a detailed and ambitious policy document that sets out a series of new energy-policy initiatives. The strategy aims to transform Denmark into a low-carbon society with a stable and affordable energy supply.  

The first phase of the strategy focuses on a series of short-term initiatives that significantly reduce dependence on fossil fuels by strengthening and expanding existing policies in energy efficiency and renewable energy. The second and third phases will involve development and implementation of long-term energy solutions including building a green transport sector and promotion of smart grids.  

This review analyses the energy-policy challenges facing Denmark as it develops and implements the ambitious policies outlined in the Energy Strategy 2050, and provides critiques and recommendations for further policy improvements in particular sectors. The intent of the review is to assist Danish policy makers as they move towards a sustainable, low-carbon energy future.