OECD Reviews of Health Care Quality: Israel 2012
Raising Standards
At a time when ever more information is available about the quality of health care, the challenge for policy makers is to better understand the policies and approaches that sit behind the numbers. This book examines whether care in Israel is safe, effective and responsive to patients’ needs. It examines what works and what does not work, both to benchmark the efforts of countries and to provide advice on reforms to improve quality of health care.
Assessment and recommendations
Israel has established one of the most enviable health care systems among OECD countries in the 15 years since it legislated mandatory health insurance. While most OECD countries have been grappling with rapidly rising health costs, Israel has contained growth in health care costs to less than half the average for OECD countries over the past decade. Health care spending in Israel absorbed 7.9% of GDP in 2009 – the eighth lowest among OECD countries. While low levels of health spending are likely to reflect successive years of tight control over spending and the lesser demands of a younger and healthier population, Israel has also made the most of tight budgetary circumstances to build a health care system with high-quality primary health care.