Dementia and its most common manifestation, Alzheimer’s disease, is a complex disorder that afflicts primarily the elderly, affecting an estimated 10 million people in OECD member countries. The complexity of the disease makes treating dementia extremely difficult, involving a wide variety of...

Does medical insurance affect health care demand and in the end contribute to improvements in the health status? Evidence for China for the year 2004, by means of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), shows that health insurance does not affect health care demand in a significant manner....

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted primary and secondary prevention efforts as well as routine cancer care including diagnosis and treatment. The number of cancer-related procedures declined across countries. Many of the OECD countries also faced challenges in maintaining and further improving...

Even in wealthy economies, access to medicines is increasingly affected by medicine shortages – an issue exacerbated with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this paper was to examine the extent and nature of medicine shortages in OECD countries (pre-COVID-19) and explore the...

Waiting times for elective (non-urgent) surgery are a main health policy concern in approximately half of OECD countries. Mean waiting times for elective surgical procedures are above three months in several countries and maximum waiting times can stretch into years. They generate...

Physicians are supposed to serve patients' interests, but some are more inclined to do so than others. This paper studies how the system of health care provision affects the allocation of patients to physicians when physicians differ in altruism. We show that allowing for private provision of...

Ensuring equal access to the latest cancer medicines is one of the most pressing challenges facing OECD health systems today. Despite the emergence of new oncology drugs, disparities in patient access—particularly through clinical trials and early access programs—remain a critical issue....

Safety is a core dimension of health care quality. Measurement of patient safety culture in OECD countries has been increasingly conducted as part of efforts to monitor patient safety and to contribute to health system performance assessment. Building on four years of work, a second OECD data...

One of the reasons why regulators are hesitant about permitting price competition in healthcare markets is that it may damage quality when information is poor. Evidence on whether this fear is well-founded is scarce. We provide evidence using a reform that permitted Dutch health insurers and...