-
Across OECD countries, a significant share of health care system spending and activities are wasteful at best, and harm our health at worst. One in ten patients in OECD countries is unnecessarily harmed at the point of care. More than 10% of hospital expenditure is spent on correcting preventable medical mistakes or infections that people catch in hospitals. One in three babies is delivered by caesarean section, whereas medical indications suggest that C-section rates should be 15% at most. Meanwhile, the market penetration of generic pharmaceuticals – drugs with effects equivalent to those of branded products but typically sold at lower prices – ranges between 10-80% across OECD countries. And a third of OECD citizens consider the health sector to be corrupt or even extremely corrupt.
-
Health care systems in OECD countries are better than ever at promoting improved health and longevity, yet they involve major budgetary commitments that countries struggle to keep in check. Pressure is ever-mounting to provide greater and more equitable access to quality care and new treatments to ageing populations.
-
-
This chapter presents the overall framework and approach that guided development of the report as well as its main findings. Starting with a simple and pragmatic definition of waste, the first section identifies and groups various categories of waste. This framework is later used to identify policy levers to tackle these different types of waste. The next three sections provide an overview of the report’s findings regarding wasteful clinical care, operational waste and governance-related waste, respectively. The concluding section points to the benefits of tackling different categories of waste and presents the organisation of the overall report.
-
-
-