Specific country notes have been prepared using data from the database OECD Health Statistics 2015, July 2015 version. The notes are available in PDF format.

Many European countries saw further reductions in health spending in 2013, according to OECD Health Statistics 2015. Health spending continued to shrink in Greece, Italy and Portugal in 2013. Most countries in the European Union reported real per capita health spending below the levels of 2009. Outside of Europe, health spending has been growing at around 2.5% per year since 2010.

Healthcare costs are rising so fast in advanced economies that they will become unaffordable by mid-century without reforms, according to a new OECD report.

Austria needs to do more to help people with mental health problems find a job or stay in the workplace, according to a new OECD report. A more comprehensive approach would help employees and firms alike: mental health issues are estimated to cost the Austrian economy around 3.6% of GDP every year in lost productivity, health care and out-of-work benefits.

Health Data Governance: Strong health data governance frameworks are needed

Too many lives are still lost in OECD countries because healthcare quality is improving too slowly to cope with ageing populations and the growing number of people with one or more chronic diseases, according to a new OECD report.

Australia should improve the integration of care across the patient pathway to prepare for a rise in chronic disease and make the health system less complex for patients, according to a new OECD report.

The recent mental health reform is an important step towards better services for people with mental ill-health, but Australia needs to do more to help people with mild to moderate mental health issues at and into work, according to a new OECD report.

Colombia has significantly improved its health system over the past 20 years, leading to a rise in life expectancy and a fall in infant mortality. To maintain its ambition of universal, high-quality health care, Colombia should now focus on improving efficiency and strengthening financial sustainability, according to a new OECD report.

In the ten years since the introduction of Seguro Popular, some 50 million Mexicans previously at risk of unaffordable health care bills now have access to health insurance. The OECD Review of Health Systems: Mexico 2016 finds that the share of the population exposed to unaffordable or impoverishing health care costs has fallen from 3.3% to 0.8% of the population in the past decade.

The Australian health system is a complex mix of federal and state government funding and responsibility, making it difficult for patients to navigate. Despite its complexity, Australia’s universal health system achieves good results relatively efficiently.

The growth rate in health spending per capita in Canada has slowed down markedly in recent years, being close to zero in real terms since 2011. Life expectancy in Canada is one year higher than the OECD average, but rising alcohol consumption and obesity rates are growing risk factors to health. Canada could further improve the quality of care in order to cope better with rising prevalence of chronic diseases.

Finland appears to have a high performing health system, with remarkable good quality in both primary and hospital care. The country also achieves good health status at relatively low level of health spending. Despite these advances, there are specific areas where improvements can be made such as preventing the spread of obesity and addressing gaps in mental health.

The French health care system performs relatively well. Health outcomes are better than the OECD average and citizens enjoy good access to care. However, France is lagging behind other OECD countries in some areas including for example antibiotics prescribing or alcohol consumption.

Italy’s indicators of health system outcomes and quality are consistently good. This is despite levels of health spending below other high-income OECD countries. However, Italy is lagging behind in some areas, like long-term care and prevention of non-communicable diseases.

Although Ireland has seen remarkable improvements in the health of its population in the last decades, several challenges lie ahead for its health system. Based on available OECD analyses, further progress could be made to promote efficient use of hospital resources, strengthen primary care, address high pharmaceutical spending and prevent the spread of risk factors including obesity and alcohol consumption.

Despite achieving near universal health coverage with a basic benefit package that all health payers must provide, health financing in Chile remains inefficient and inequitable. There is room for improving the system by moving towards a unified, equitable social security system for the entire population.

Although many health indicators are improving in Mexico, the country has the lowest life expectancy in the OECD. This is due to unhealthy lifestyles with higher risk factors to health leading to chronic diseases and mortality, but also to persisting barriers of access to high-quality health care services.

Belgium shows average health outcomes compared to other OECD countries. Life expectancy at birth is 80.7 years, just above the OECD average. Quality of care is fair, standing again near the OECD average. Health expenditure at 10.2% of GDP is higher than the OECD average of 1.3% points in 2013. Health policy in Belgium relies on shared responsibility of both the federal authorities and federated entities (regions and communities).

The number of doctors and nurses has reached record levels in the OECD. Countries should now reform their training and employment strategies to better respond to people’s changing health needs and also reduce their reliance on foreign-trained health workers from developing countries, according to a new OECD report.

“Mental health issues exact a high price on individuals, their families, employers and the economy,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría, “Policymakers have been too slow to act. Strong political leadership is needed to drive reform and tackle this issue.”

Between 2009 and 2013, public spending on health fell by EUR 5.2 billion – representing a 32% drop in real-terms. This reduction clearly represents a shock for the system to adsorb, even though it is clear that there were inefficiencies in the Greek system (for example, inappropriate prescribing, weak primary care, imbalances in the mix of health professionals).

Norway has an impressive and comprehensive health system, but it is facing several challenges over the coming years. The shift in the need for care from an ageing population will weigh heavily on the Norwegian health care system, demanding for more skilled health care personnel as well as strengthening of community care.

Israel has built a universal health system at relatively low-cost. Health spending was 7.5% of GDP in 2013, below the OECD average of 8.9% although the health spending share of GDP has been increasing rapidly, particularly in recent years. Israel has developed a sophisticated programme to monitor quality of primary care.

In the past 30 years Korea has gone from having a limited medical infrastructure, fragmented financing and limited population coverage, to a health care system characterised by universal coverage, one of the highest life expectancies in the world while still having one of the lowest levels of health expenditure among OECD countries.

On 16-17 January 2017, the OECD will host a meeting for Ministers of Health and a High-Level Policy Forum on person-centred care, at the OECD Headquarters in Paris.

Responses from the third wave of the OECD Health System Characteristics Survey are available online, providing access to the most recent information on key institutional characteristics of health systems of OECD countries and key partner and accession countries.

The High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, chaired by H.E. François Hollande and H.E. Jacob Zuma, today delivered its final report and recommendations to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Latvia has successfully consolidated its hospital sector and strengthened primary care since the financial crisis. But persistent barriers to accessing high quality care need to be removed, according to a new OECD report.

The G7 Health Ministers meeting in Kobe on 11-12 September welcomed OECD work on the linkages between Universal Health Coverage and healthy ageing, and recognised OECD work on access to innovative health treatments. The OECD will deliver initial findings following the French-led initiative to identify innovative options to pay for new medicines and high-cost treatments at the 17 January 2016 OECD Health Ministers meeting.

Asia-Pacific countries should strengthen their health systems and sharply increase spending to deliver effective universal coverage in order to meet the changing needs of their fast ageing populations, according to a new OECD report.

This High-Level Forum will be held at the OECD Conference Centre in Paris on 16 January 2017. Issues include: Harnessing digital technology and data to create proactive, people-centred systems; Overcoming technical, institutional and cultural challenges; Caring for people with complex needs; The importance of measuring what matters to people and to patients, and The role of international and cross-sector collaboration.

OECD Health Ministers meeting in Paris have underlined their commitment to tackling important challenges facing health systems around the world. E.g. improving the delivery of high-quality care for all; addressing how to pay for effective health technologies; measuring health system performance on the basis of what it delivers to people, as well as making better use of health data; and making health systems more people-centred.

Read about our groundbreaking report on inequality - In it Together: Why less inequality benefits all - as well as our recent work on tackling harmful alcohol use. You can also find here all our work on employment, migration, health and social policy over the last few months, as well as highlights from this summer's OECD Forum which addressed the theme "Investing in the future: people, planet, prosperity”.

Universal Health Coverage is about everyone having access to good quality health services without suffering financial hardship. Although most OECD countries offer all their citizens affordable access to a comprehensive package of health services, they face challenges in sustaining and enhancing such universal systems.

There is now strong evidence that microbiomes play an important role in human health, as there are clear linkages to many major non-communicable diseases. This report assesses the key policy challenges for innovation in the microbiome. It argues that if such a promising scientific field is to lead to innovative applications, policies on science and innovation must be improved in five areas.

Mental disorders represent a considerable disease burden, and have a significant impact on the lives of the OECD population, and account for considerable direct and indirect costs. This report argues that even in those OECD countries with a long history of deinstitutionalisation, there is still a long way to go to make community-based mental health care that achieves good outcomes for people with severe mental illness a reality.

World Health Summit 2017: OECD presenting on Big Data

This new series of OECD Reviews of Public Health provide in-depth analysis and policy recommendations to strengthen priority areas of countries’ public health systems, highlighting best practice examples that allow learning from shared experiences, and the spreading of innovative approaches.

This document, produced to inform the 2017 meeting of the G7 Ministers of Health, provides a broad overview of the main policy issues and some of the policy actions that G7 Health authorities can put in place to improve population health, while at the same time decreasing the human footprint on the environment.

Healthier lifestyles, higher incomes and better education have all contributed to boost life expectancy in recent decades. Better health care has also helped, according to a new OECD report.

OECD Health Statistics 2017 is the most comprehensive source of comparable statistics on health and health systems across OECD countries. All datasets have been updated on 10 November 2017, including the datasets for Pharmaceutical Market and Health Care Quality Indicators.

The Country Health Profiles are an important step in the European Commission’s two-year State of Health in the EU cycle and are the result of joint work between the OECD and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. The concise, policy relevant profiles are based on a transparent, consistent methodology, using both quantitative and qualitative data, yet flexibly adapted to the context of each EU Member State.

Read about the release of Health at a Glance 2017, of the 28 EU Country Health Profiles, and of other major reports such as Preventing Ageing Unequally and our Costa Rica and Peru OECD Reviews of Health Systems. The Health Division also prepared for the Milan G7 Health Ministers’ Meeting a brochure on "Healthy people, healthy planet". Also access our latest Health Working Papers.

This new brochure presents the OECD Work on Health for 2017-2018, including all recent and forthcoming major publications and databases.

The OECD’s latest edition of Health at a Glance shows that medical care is improving in OECD countries, but better prevention and management of chronic diseases is required to reduce costs.

Australians continue to enjoy one of the highest levels of health across the developed world but need to address Australia’s growing obesity problem, according to a new OECD report.

According to a new OECD report, variation in rates of health care activity between geographic areas within a country may be a cause for concern. Wide variation suggests that whether or not patients receive a particular health service depends on the region where they live within a country.

Specific country notes have been prepared using data from the database OECD Health Statistics 2015, July 2015 version. The notes are available in PDF format.

Australia performs well in terms of overall population health status. At 82.2 years, life expectancy is the sixth highest in the OECD, and the country’s record on breast and colorectal cancer survival is among the best. Australia has one of the lowest rates of tobacco consumption (12.8% of the population aged 15 and over), but it is the fifth most obese country in the OECD (28.3% of the population aged 15 and over).