Health Reform
Meeting the Challenge of Ageing and Multiple Morbidities
When the OECD was founded in 1961, health systems were gearing themselves up to deliver
acute care interventions. Sick people were to be cured in hospitals, then sent on
their way again. Medical training was focused on hospitals; innovation was to develop
new interventions; payment systems were centred around single episodes of care. Health
systems have delivered big improvements in health since then, but they can be slow
to adapt to new challenges. In particular, these days, the overwhelming burden of
disease is chronic, for which ‘cure’ is out of our reach. Health policies have changed
to some extent in response, though perhaps not enough. But the challenge of the future
is that the typical recipient of health care will be aged and will have multiple morbidities.
This book examines how payment systems, innovation policies and human resource policies
need to be modernised so that OECD health systems will continue to generate improved
health outcomes in the future at a sustainable cost.
Published on November 10, 2011Also available in: Korean