International comparisons of health care systems offer valuable tools to health ministers, policymakers, and academics wishing to evaluate the performance of their country's system. In this chartbook, we use data collected by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to compare health care systems and performance on a range of topics, including spending, hospitals, physicians, pharmaceuticals, prevention, mortality, quality and safety, and prices. We present data across several industrialized countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Whenever possible, we also present the median value of all 34 members of the OECD.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an international organization representing 34 industrialized countries that share a commitment to democracy and a market economy. The OECD produces reports and data on a wide range of economic and social issues, including the OECD Health Data series, an annual release of data on various aspects of health and health care in the member countries. Working with statistical offices in each member country, the OECD produces the most accurate and comprehensive international health care data available on the 34 nations.
This chartbook also includes data from: analysis of the 2013 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey, an analysis by Panos Kanavos et al. on pharmaceutical prices, originally published in Health Affairs; an analysis by Warren Stevens et al. on mortality as a result of cancer from 1995-2007, originally published in Health Affairs; the International Federation of Health Plans on the price of diagnostic tests; and an analysis on international health and social care spending as a percentage of GDP from Elizabeth Bradley and Lauren Taylor’s book, “The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More Is Getting Us Less.”