About one in ten patients are harmed during health care. This paper estimates the health, financial and economic costs of this harm. Results indicate that patient harm exerts a considerable global health burden. The financial cost on health systems is also considerable and if the flow-on...

This article looks at the application of performance measurement systems in the health sector across OECD countries. The data comes from the 2017 OECD Survey on Performance Measurement Systems in the Health Sector and Responsibilities across Levels of Government. The results show that the...

Measuring health care productivity is important as health is a large sector of the economy and with the majority of funding coming from public sources, the outlook for productivity growth is a critical factor in the debate about fiscal sustainability. The UK has over 20 years’ experience of...

In light of the many discussions advocating the use of pay-for-performance and performance budgeting, this paper argues that discouraging experience with both approaches should temper expectations that performance measurement can be a reform that will make health care systems more "sustainable"...

Universal health coverage has been achieved in nearly all OECD countries, providing the population with access to a defined range of goods and services. This paper provides detailed descriptions of how countries delineate the range of benefits covered, including the role of health technology...

This work is a compilation of studies produced at the Social Studies Department - Disoc/Ipea to support the elaboration of the document "Brazil: the state of the Union - 2007". Health outcomes in the last decades, health policies after 1988 and the role of the government in health care are...

We use a randomized community development programme in rural Pakistan to assess the impact of citizen engagement on public service delivery and maternal and child health outcomes. The programme had a strong focus on ensuring the participation of women. Women in the study villages had also...

We evaluate the efficiency of expenditure in health care provision by comparing various output measures (life expectancy; infant survival rate; years of life recovered from diseases; population; area) from the health system of Brazilian and OECD countries with an expenditure measure (health...

Different conceptions about distribution criteria in health services are discussed based on the notion of fairness, and in the assumption that health requirements are simultaneously social security needs. Issues of equity and limits in distribution of health services are highlighted as they are...

Health care, including access to medicines, is granted as a citizen's right by the Brazilian Constitution through a national health system called Unified Health System (SUS). The Pharmaceutical Care Programmes of SUS are, quite often, the only way a large part of the population has to obtain...