US Healthcare System Still Lagging Behind
Jul 29, 2010
This past June a study was released by the Commonwealth Fund – a US organization that promotes evidence-based quality health care there – that compared the American health care system with that of six other nations, including Canada. Not surprisingly, it ranked the United States last or close to last in almost every category.
The report, entitled Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: How the Performance of the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally (2010 Update), is based on information from the most recent three Commonwealth Fund surveys of patients and primary care physicians about medical practices and views of their countries’ health systems.
Of the seven nations studied – Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States – the US ranks last overall, as it did in 2007, 2006 and 2004 issues of Mirror Mirror. The report’s authors find most troubling the fact that the US fails to achieve better health outcomes than the other countries, and in fact ranks last in terms of access, patient safety, coordination, efficiency and equity.
Of all the countries surveyed, the Netherlands ranked first, followed closely by the United Kingdom and Australia. Canada consistently ranked in the bottom three of almost all categories, with the exception of “Long, Healthy, Productive Lives (2nd).”
The most obvious way the US differed from the other nations was with regard to the absence of universal health insurance coverage. However, health reform legislation recently passed into law by US President Obama should lead to improvements in this area. But even when access and equity measures were not considered, the US still ranked behind most of the other countries on most measures. And this is the country that continues to spend more than all other countries in terms of health care administration.
The report found that all countries had room for improvement . But it couldn’t help note that all six other spend considerably less than on health care per person and as a percentage of gross domestic product than does the United States. It concludes by stating that from the perspectives of both physicians and patients, “the U.S. health care system could do much better in achieving value for the nation’s substantial investment in health.”
The report can be accessed here.
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