This study updates and extends a previous study on equity in physician utilisation for a subset of the countries analyzed here (Van Doorslaer, Koolman and Puffer, 2002). It updates results to 2000 for 13 countries and adds new results for eight countries: Australia, Finland, France, Hungary,...

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...

Improving patient safety culture (PSC) is a significant priority for OECD countries as they work to improve healthcare quality and safety—a goal that has increased in importance as countries have faced new safety concerns connected to the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings from benchmarking work in...

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...

This study presents a broad overview of health-system reforms in OECD countries over the past several decades. Reforms are assessed according to their impact on the following policy goals: ensuring access to needed health-care services; improving the quality of health care and its outcomes;...

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...

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic many countries found that they lacked basic, timely data for decision making—such as information on health workforce, resources, hospitalisations, and mortality. Many policy makers have since leveraged COVID-19 related information system reforms in a way...

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...

Digital technologies offer unique opportunities to strengthen health systems. However, the digital infrastructure only provide the tools, which on their own cannot transform the health systems, but need to be put to productive use by health workers. This report discusses how to engage and...

This paper sets out the OECD’s assessment of the provision of community-based mental health care in Lithuania. It provides an overview of the burden of mental ill health in Lithuania, highlights strengths and challenges of the mental health care system and care delivery, reports on the quality...