Wednesday, May 05, 2004

There Is No Perfect Health System
"Perspective" article in Health Affairs by Elizabeth A. McGlynn - "Extensive research into quality of care in different countries yields no conclusive findings that one system is better or worse than others. Quality does not necessarily vary with financing mechanisms; even countries with single-payer systems have variations in quality. Quality is not directly related to the amount spent on health care, since the highest-spending country (the United States) does not have measurably better outcomes. Investments in the quality measurement and reporting systems in all countries would substantially increase the opportunities to learn from cross-national comparisons."  
  

When Things Go Wrong: How Health Care Organizations Deal With Major Failures
Article in Health Affairs - "Concern about patient safety, caused in part by high-profile major failures in which many patients have been harmed, is rising worldwide. This paper draws on examples of such failures from several countries to analyze how these events are dealt with and to identify lessons and recommendations for policy. Better systems are needed for reporting and investigating failures and for implementing the lessons learned. The culture of secrecy, professional protectionism, defensiveness, and deference to authority is central to such major failures, and preventing future failures depends on cultural as much as structural change in health care systems and organizations."  
  

Trends and Indicators in the Changing Health Care Marketplace, 2004 Update
This page at the Kaiser Family Foundation web site provides an index to different section sof this report, which "presents information on key trends in the health care marketplace of interest to policymakers, public interest groups, the media, and industry analysts and leaders. This chartbook updates many of the exhibits included in earlier reports..."