Improving the timeliness of health expenditure tracking in OECD and low- and middle-income
countries
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that access to timely health spending data is
crucial for informed policy-making. This Health Working Paper summarises and compares
the methodologies applied in around half of OECD countries to estimate public and
private health spending for the most recent year (i.e., t-1) as well as the approaches
taken by the OECD Secretariat to fill existing data gaps for the remaining OECD countries.
For the first time, the paper also explores the feasibility of nowcasting health spending
for the current year (i.e., t) and examines data sources that could be potentially
useful in such an exercise. While this review should help OECD countries that do not
yet have experience in estimating health spending for year t-1 to improve the timeliness
in their data reporting, the paper also analyses the applicability of the methods
in low- and middle-income countries.
Published on February 27, 2023
In series:OECD Health Working Papersview more titles