Latest Documents

Paying providers for healthcare

How health providers are paid is one of the key policy levers that countries have to drive health system performance. The 2012 HSC Survey analyses the payment modes currently in use in OECD countries to remunerate primary care, outpatient specialist care and inpatient care, the price regulations for health services and identifies new innovative modes of payments in more detail.

Health Information Infrastructure

OECD Health Ministers welcomed the Recommendation of the OECD Council on Health Data Governance at their meeting in Paris on 17 January 2017. The Recommendation lays out the framework conditions to encourage greater availability and processing of health data within countries and across borders for health-related public policy objectives, while ensuring that risks to privacy and security are minimised and appropriately managed.

Health Update - The OECD Newsletter on Health

This edition focuses on the release of "Embracing a One Health Framework to Fight Antimicrobial Resistance". Our report shows that without stronger One Health action – i.e. policy action encompassing people, animals, agri-food systems and the environment – AMR rates are forecasted to increase in the next three decades across OECD and EU/EEA countries, with substantial costs for health systems and economies.

Patient Safety

Patient safety is a critical policy issue and remains an important challenge to all OECD health systems. Many adverse events leading to harm could have been prevented if appropriate safety protocols and clinical guidelines were followed.

Addressing the challenges of access to medicines

Exploring further policy options suggested in the report Pharmaceutical Innovation and access to medicines, the OECD has undertaken, with financial support from the European Commission, several projects to further identify avenues to increase pharmaceutical expenditure efficiency and better prepare to changes in the market.

Primary Care

Strengthening primary care, and getting greater value out of this sector, is a priority for all OECD health systems. The OECD Health Division has an ongoing programme of work to support countries in strengthening primary care systems that can meet the needs of their populations now and in the future.

Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy project

The OECD Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy project had two main objectives: to add to the base of information about pharmaceutical pricing policy in OECD countries and develop a taxonomy and framework for making international comparisons of policies, and to analyse cross-national impacts and implications of policies, particularly with respect to the impacts on pharmaceutical prices paid in other countries and on pharmaceutical R&D.

Healthcare prices and Purchasing Power Parities

Variations in per capita health spending can be the result of differences in prices for healthcare goods and services, and in the quantity of care that individuals are using (“volume”). Eurostat and the OECD have calculated purchasing power parities and price level indexes for GDP and some 50 product groups, including health and hospitals, on a regular and timely basis.

Health at a Glance: Europe 2022 - State of Health in the EU Cycle

OECD Health Statistics 2022: Frequently Requested Data (Excel file)

Download this selection of key indicators from OECD Health Statistics 2022, in Excel. November 2022 version (updated).