Health at a Glance: Europe 2014
This third edition of Health at a Glance: Europe presents a set of key indicators related to health status, determinants of health, health care resources and activities, quality of care, access to care, and health expenditure and financing in 35 European countries, including the 28 European Union member states, four candidate countries and three EFTA countries. The selection of indicators is based largely on the European Core Health Indicators (ECHI) shortlist, a set of indicators that has been developed to guide the reporting of health statistics in the European Union. This is complemented by additional indicators on quality of care, access to care and health expenditure, building on the OECD expertise in these areas.
Compared with the previous edition, this third edition includes a greater number of ECHI indicators, reflecting progress in the availability of comparable data in the areas of non-medical determinants of health and access to care. It also includes a new chapter dedicated to access to care, including selected indicators on financial access, geographic access and timely access.
Trade in health services
The globalisation of health care has given rise to new patterns of consumption and production of health care services over recent decades. A significant new element of the trade in health care has involved the movement of patients across borders in the pursuit of medical treatment: a phenomenon commonly termed medical tourism. This growth has been fuelled by a number of factors. Technological advances in information systems and communication allow patients or purchasers of health care to seek out quality treatment at lower cost and/or more immediately from health care providers in other countries. The portability of health coverage, as a result of EU-wide measures to facilitate patient flows with regard to public health insurance systems, may also fuel further increases. All this is coupled with a general increase in the temporary movement of populations for business or leisure.
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