Health data are essential for managing and improving health system performance, strengthening healthcare quality, addressing major public health challenges and advancing scientific discoveries. As digitalisation and health data infrastructure advance, the key challenge shifts from ensuring that information exists to ensuring that it is meaningfully used for the benefit of society, and that priority is given to the most relevant data. In 2024, OECD Health Ministers endorsed a renewed OECD HSPA framework to guide further development of internationally comparable measurements. In these contexts, country-specific Health System Performance Assessment (HSPA) frameworks have increasingly been developed across OECD countries and regions to highlight key performance metrics and to structure health data for shared, informed policy and decision making.
The OECD has a long-standing role in supporting its member countries in health system performance and care quality assessments, as well as providing direct support to national HSPA efforts. Beyond developing metrics, the OECD has been providing country-specific support to strengthen national capacity for evidence‑based health system improvement. To date, the OECD Secretariat has provided direct technical assistance to four member countries to help design their national HSPA frameworks through participatory and inclusive processes and provided guidance and support to several others. Such an approach ensures that HSPA frameworks remain nationally relevant, enable international comparison, build sustainable capacity, and promote stakeholder ownership – all essential to achieving evidence‑based improvements in health system performance.
In 2024, the Slovak Republic’s authorities decided to develop a national HSPA and requested assistance from the European Commission and consequently the OECD. The HSPA framework for the Slovak Republic presented in this report is the result of activities led by the OECD in co‑operation with the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic and the European Commission’s SG REFORM under the project “24LU02 & 24SK01 Developing Health System Performance Assessment Frameworks for Luxembourg and Slovakia”. As part of this project, the OECD provided technical support to help the Slovak Republic and Luxembourg design their national HSPA frameworks, strengthen the capacity of national authorities to produce regular HSPA reports, and support them in the preparation of their first HSPA reports. The project was structured as a multi-country initiative, with Luxembourg and the Slovak Republic developing their national HSPAs simultaneously and participating in joint activities to enhance cross-country learning and mutual experience sharing. This Report forms part of the Project’s Output 4: Methodological Report on HSPA in the Slovak Republic.