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Universal Health Coverage

Universal Health Coverage is about everyone having access to good quality health services without suffering financial hardship. Although most OECD countries offer all their citizens affordable access to a comprehensive package of health services, they face challenges in sustaining and enhancing such universal systems.

Public Health Reviews

This series of OECD Reviews of Public Health provide in-depth analysis and policy recommendations to strengthen priority areas of countries’ public health systems, highlighting best practice examples that allow learning from shared experiences, and the spreading of innovative approaches.

Managing Hospital Volumes: Germany and Experiences from OECD Countries

To help inform the Conference on Managing Hospital Volumes, co-organised by the German Federal Ministry of Health and the OECD, and held on the 11th April 2013 in Berlin, the OECD Secretariat produced a paper to provide an international perspective on Germany’s situation and the current policy debate.

Pricing and Competition in Specialist Medical Services

The pricing of specialist and hospital services is a contentious issue in South Africa. To help inform domestic debates, the OECD Secretariat has produced a paper profiling international experiences on the pricing of specialist medical services services, competition policy and models of buying services from the private sector.

Healthcare prices and Purchasing Power Parities

Variations in per capita health spending can be the result of differences in prices for healthcare goods and services, and in the quantity of care that individuals are using (“volume”). Eurostat and the OECD have calculated purchasing power parities and price level indexes for GDP and some 50 product groups, including health and hospitals, on a regular and timely basis.

The economic consequences of air pollution policies in Arctic Council countries - A sectoral analysis

Boosting investment in health systems will be essential to deal with future shocks, says OECD

Governments should urgently adapt their health systems to better respond to future shocks, given the huge impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people and the global economy. Major investment is needed in the health workforce, alongside increased spending on prevention and digital infrastructure, according to a new OECD report.

G7 Health Ministerial meetings

The OECD is actively involved in the G7 Health Ministers meetings. This page reviews the issues discussed as well as the reports prepared by the OECD to inform those meetings.

Health Systems Characteristics

Responses from the OECD Health System Characteristics Survey are available online, providing access to the most recent information on key institutional characteristics of health systems of OECD countries, key partner and accession countries for its 2012 and 2016 editions, as well as Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries for its 2018 edition.

Country Health Profiles 2021

The State of Health in the EU’s Country Health Profiles provide a concise and policy-relevant overview of health and health systems in the EU/European Economic area, emphasizing the particular characteristics and challenges in each country. The 2021 edition has a special focus on the impact and responses of European health systems to the COVID-19 pandemic.