These Are The 36 Countries That Have Better Healthcare Systems Than The US

12 years ago, the World Health Organization released the World Health Report 2000. Inside the report there was an ambitious task — to rank the world's best healthcare systems. The results became notorious — the US healthcare system came in 15th in overall performance, and first in overall expenditure per capita. That result meant that its overall ranking was 37th. The results have long been debated, with critics arguing that the data was out-of-date, incomplete, and that factors such as literacy and life expectancy were over-weighted. So controversial were the results that the WHO declined to rank countries in their World Health Report 2010, but the debate has raged on. In that same year, a report from the Commonwealth Fund ranked seven developed countries on their health care performance — the US came dead last. So, what can we learn from the report? NOTE: The rankings are based on an index of five factors — health, health equality, responsiveness, responsiveness equality, and fair financial contribution. As noted above, all data is from 2000 or earlier and these findings have been questioned.

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The Great Coronary Angioplasty Debate: Giving Patients the Right to Speak | The Health Care Blog

Today's post was shared by The Health Care Blog and comes from thehealthcareblog.com

By Nortin Hadler, MD Earlier this month, the editors of THCB saw fit to post my essay, “The End of the Era of Coronary Angioplasty.” The comments posted on THCB in response to the essay, and those the editors and I have directly received, have been most gratifying. The essay is an exercise in informing medical decisions, which is my creed as a clinician and perspective as a clinical investigator. I use the recent British federal guideline document as my object lesson. This Guideline examines the science that speaks to the efficacy of the last consensus indication for angioplasty, the setting of an acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Clinical science has rendered all other indications, by consensus, relative at best. But in the case of STEMI, the British guideline panel supports the consensus and concludes that angioplasty should be “offered” in a timely fashion. I will not repeat my original essay here since it is only a click away. The exercise I display is how I would take this last consensus statement into a trusting, empathic patient-physician discourse. This is a hypothetical exercise to the extent that little in the way of clear thinking can be expected of a patient in the throes of a STEMI, and not much more of the patient’s caring community. So all of us, we the people regardless of our credentials, need to consider and value the putative efficacy of angioplasty (with or without stenting) a priori. For me, personally, there is...

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Why Health Care Is Stuck — And How to Fix It

Medical costs approximate the largest majority of costs in workers' compensation claims. Today's post was shared by NEJM and comes from blogs.hbr.org

The pressures for fundamental change in health care have been building for decades, but meaningful change has been limited while the urgency of change only grows. The moment of discontinuity has arrived. Already unsustainable costs, an aging population, advances in medicine, and a growing proportion of patients in low reimbursement government programs have made the status quo unsustainable. Change is inevitable. There is only one real solution, which is to dramatically increase the value of health care. Value is the outcomes achieved for patients relative to the money spent. Without major improvements in value, services will need to be restricted, the incomes of health care professionals will fall, and patients will be asked to pay even more. In our October Harvard Business Review article “The Strategy That Will Fix Health Care”we describe the strategic agenda that is necessary to create a high value health care delivery system. We believe that there is no longer any doubt about how to increase the value of care. The question is whether providers can make the necessary changes. Why has it been so hard for health care organizations to improve outcomes and efficiency, despite their best intentions? With so many good, smart people working so hard? With patients’ needs so obvious and so compelling? And with such deep societal concerns about health care spending? The...

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Occupational Health: An International Effort Launched by WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a global effort to promote the improvement of working conditions. WHO has developed a Global workplan in collaboration with the WHO Network of Collaborating Centres based on the objectives of the GPA for 2009-2012. The workplan organizes the activities of the Collaborating Centres into 14 priority areas.


Click here to read The Final Edition of the 2009-2012 Workplan (just released)

The main objectives of the WHO Global Plan of Action on Workers' Health (GPA) (2008-2017) are to:

• Strengthen the governance and leadership function of national health systems to respond to the specific health needs of working populations
• Establish basic levels of health protection at all workplaces to decrease inequalities in workers health between and within countries and strengthen the promotion of health at work.
• Ensure access of all workers to preventive health services and link occupational health to primary health care.
• Improve the knowledge base for action on protecting and promoting the health of workers and establish linkages between health and work.
• Stimulate incorporation of actions on workers health into other policies, such as sustainable development, poverty reduction, trade liberalization, environmental protection and employment.

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