International Comparisons Of Administrative Costs In Health Care

The United States has the highest per capita spending on health care of any industrialized nation but continually lags behind other nations in health care outcomes including life expectancy and infant mortality. National health expenditures are projected to exceed $2.5 trillion in 2009. Given healthcare's direct impact on the economy, there is a critical need to control health care spending. According to The Health Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes, the costs of health care have strained the federal budget, and negatively affected state governments, the private sector and individuals. Healthcare expenditures have restricted the ability of state and local governments to fund other priorities and have contributed to slowing growth in wages and jobs in the private sector. Moreover, the number of uninsured has risen from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008. The Health Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes identifies a number of factors driving expenditure growth including scientific uncertainty, perverse economic and practice incentives, system fragmentation, lack of patient involvement, and under-investment in population health. Experts discussed key levers for catalyzing transformation of the delivery system. A few included streamlined health insurance regulation, administrative simplification and clarification and quality and consistency in treatment. The book is an excellent guide for policymakers at all levels of government, as well as private sector healthcare workers.

This background paper is part of a larger study on International Differences in Health Care Technology and Spending, which consists of a series of back- ground papers. International Health Statistics: What the numbers mean for the United States was published in November 1993, and International Comparisons of Administrative Costs in Health Care appeared in September 1994. An additional background paper will report on lessons for the United States from a comparison; of hospital financing and spending in seven countries.

Countries could potentially spend significantly less on health care with no impact on health system performance, or on health outcomes. This report reviews strategies put in place by countries to limit ineffective spending and waste.

During the last 25 years, life expectancy at age 50 in the United States has been rising, but at a slower pace than in many other high-income countries, such as Japan and Australia. This difference is particularly notable given that the United States spends more on health care than any other nation. Concerned about this divergence, the National Institute on Aging asked the National Research Council to examine evidence on its possible causes. According to Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries, the nation's history of heavy smoking is a major reason why lifespans in the United States fall short of those in many other high-income nations. Evidence suggests that current obesity levels play a substantial part as well. The book reports that lack of universal access to health care in the U.S. also has increased mortality and reduced life expectancy, though this is a less significant factor for those over age 65 because of Medicare access. For the main causes of death at older ages -- cancer and cardiovascular disease -- available indicators do not suggest that the U.S. health care system is failing to prevent deaths that would be averted elsewhere. In fact, cancer detection and survival appear to be better in the U.S. than in most other high-income nations, and survival rates following a heart attack also are favorable. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries identifies many gaps in research. For instance, while lung cancer deaths are a reliable marker of the damage from smoking, no clear-cut marker exists for obesity, physical inactivity, social integration, or other risks considered in this book. Moreover, evaluation of these risk factors is based on observational studies, which -- unlike randomized controlled trials -- are subject to many biases.

Australien, canada, frankrig, brd, italien, holland, sverige schweiz, storbritannien, usa. Ghere has long been a need for a book which documents and analyses he alth care expenditure. The study defines four faces of health care spending - sources of finance, control of health care delivery, manpower and supplies, and services provided. The numerous figures and tables will be of great value to statisticians, but many interes- ting facts emerge which make the book a great deal more than a sta- tistical cronical. For instance, the quality of health care in each country is analysed, proving that high expenditure does not in itself garantee a totally adequate health level.

A System of Health Accounts 2011 provides a systematic description of the financial flows related to the consumption of health care goods and services. As demands for information increase and more countries implement and institutionalise health accounts according to the system, the data produced are expected to be more comparable, more detailed and more policy relevant. This publication summarises the System of Health Accounts 2011 (SHA 2011) Manual, which was jointly produced by OECD, the European Commission and WHO. The SHA 2011 Manual itself draws inspiration from and builds on the original manual, published in 2000, and the Gui de to Producing National Health Accounts (2003) to create a single global framework for producing health expenditure accounts that can help track resource flows from sources to uses. The manual is the result of a four-year collaborative effort between OECD, Eurostat and WHO, and sets out in more detail the boundaries, the definitions and the concepts responding to health care systems around the globe - from the simplest to the more complicated.