Publications & Documents

Universal Health Coverage

Universal Health Coverage is about everyone having access to good quality health services without suffering financial hardship. Although most OECD countries offer all their citizens affordable access to a comprehensive package of health services, they face challenges in sustaining and enhancing such universal systems.

Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Indicators

Healthcare quality is a core dimension of health system performance. The Healthcare Quality and Outcomes programme aims to develop and report indicators for international comparisons of healthcare quality.

Integrated Care

Across OECD countries, aging populations and increasing numbers of people with chronic diseases shift the focus of health care services away from acute care addressing longer episodes of health care needs. In recent decades, OECD countries have introduced integrated care initiatives aimed at ensuring individuals receive the right care, in the right place, at the right time.

Waiting Times

Long waiting times for health services have been an important policy issue in most OECD countries for many years. The COVID-19 outbreak is likely to result in at least some temporary increases in waiting times for non-urgent services in all the OECD countries that have been hard hit.

Hospital performance

Hospitals are important targets in national efforts to improve health system performance. The OECD currently collects a number of acute care measures of hospital performance on a national level, such as the mortality rate within 30 days of patients being admitted to hospital after an acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Several effective strategies to lower AMI mortality rates in OECD countries have been identified.

Long-term care workforce: caring for the ageing population with dignity

The OECD examines barriers to and policy options for promoting a stronger LTC workforce. Some of the themes analysed include education and training, recruitment and retention, productivity and use of technology, coordination between social and health workers, and coordination between formal and informal workers.

La transformation numérique des systèmes de santé peut nettement améliorer les performances et les résultats

Il ressort d’un nouveau rapport de l’OCDE que les systèmes de santé des pays membres sont soumis à des pressions financières accrues du fait de priorités concurrentes en matière de financement public. Selon les estimations de l’édition 2023 du Panorama de la santé de l’OCDE, les dépenses de santé dans les pays de l’OCDE représentaient 9.2 % du PIB en 2022, contre 9.7 % en 2021.

Towards person-centered integrated care in Italy - Flyer (in Italian)

Find out more about the project “Towards person-centered integrated care in Italy”, implemented by the OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs (ELS) and the OECD Trento Centre for Local Development, in cooperation with the Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support of the European Commission.

Understanding international measures of health spending - Age-adjusting expenditure on health

Paying providers for healthcare

How health providers are paid is one of the key policy levers that countries have to drive health system performance. The 2012 HSC Survey analyses the payment modes currently in use in OECD countries to remunerate primary care, outpatient specialist care and inpatient care, the price regulations for health services and identifies new innovative modes of payments in more detail.