This publication examines current efforts to improve health care efficiency, including tools that show promise in helping health systems provide the best care for their money.

This publication examines current efforts to improve health care efficiency, including tools that show promise in helping health systems provide the best care for their money.

This report report examines selected policies that may help countries better achieve the goal of improved health system efficiency and thus better value for money.

This report report examines selected policies that may help countries better achieve the goal of improved health system efficiency and thus better value for money.

Health spending continues to rise inexorably, growing faster than the economy in most OECD countries. Most of this spending comes from the public purse. Given the recent economic downturn, countries are looking for ways to improve the efficiency of health spending. This publication examines current efforts to improve health care efficiency, including tools that show promise in helping health systems provide the best care for their money, such as pay for performance, coordination of care, health technology assessment and clinical guidelines, pharmaceutical reimbursement and risk-sharing agreements, and information and communication technology.--Publisher's description.

Government spending on health has grown as a percent of GDP over the last 40 years in industrialized countries. Widespread decentralization of healthcare systems has often accompanied this increase in spending. In this paper, we explore the effect of soft budget constraints on subnational health spending in a sample of OECD countries. We find countries where subnational governments rely primarily on central government financing and enjoy large borrowing autonomy have higher healthcare spending than those with more restrictions on subnational government borrowing.

This series of seven policy studies cover lessons from experience in health system reform, improving the technical quality of health care, income-related inequality in health care, matching supply with demand for physicians and nurses, excessive waiting times, private health insurance, and more.

Provides information and analysis on such topics as, new and emerging health-related technologies, long-term care, private health insurance, health-care cost control, equity of access across income groups, health workforce planning and productivity, and waiting times for elective surgery.