Spiralling health care costs will force the world's richest nations to seek better value for their money, the OECD said Wednesday, urging the efficient use of computerised data systems and prevention campaigns.
"Rising health costs continue to be a pressing policy issue in most OECD countries," the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said in a three-year study released during the Paris-based group's annual forum. "Increasing efficiency may be the only way of reconciling rising demands for health care with public financing constraints.
"Changing how health funding is spent, rather than mere cost-cutting, is key to achieving better value," said the report issued by the world's 30 leading industrial nations.
The OECD hailed the general improvement in health care among member states, with life expectancy up an average of 8.6 years from 1960 to 2000, and a sharp drop in infant mortality to just seven deaths per 1,000 live births in 2000.
But it lamented the rise in incidence of chronic conditions such as asthma and obesity, noting that 30 percent of adults in the United States and 20 percent of adults in Australia, Britain and Mexico are considered to be obese. To combat such health problems, the OECD urged increased spending on prevention campaigns, saying just five cents of every dollar spent on health care in its member nations is devoted to awareness initiatives.
The OECD also expressed concern over "very serious shortcomings in quality that result in unnecessary deaths, disability and poor health, and that add to costs," such as wrong-site surgeries and incorrect medication prescription.
On the crucial issue of cost, it said that "spending more is not necessarily a problem ... but since three quarters of OECD health spending comes from the public purse, government budgets are feeling the pinch."
Health care spending in 2001 accounted for 8.3 percent of gross domestic product across the OECD, with the United States spending 13.9 percent of GDP on health care. Costs exceeded 10 percent of GDP in Germany and Switzerland.
Those figures marked an increase as compared with health care spending in 1990, which stood at about seven percent of GDP. In 1970, health spending represented just five percent of GDP in OECD countries.
The OECD suggested "modest co-payments" to relieve pressure on governments but warned such a measure was "no magic bullet, partly because vulnerable populations must be protected to avoid restrictions on access that could be costly in the long run."
Private health insurance, which accounts for 6.4 percent of total health care spending in OECD states, is only a partial solution, the organisation noted, as such policies often "concentrate on treating minor risks".
As a way to both cut costs and reduce errors in medical care, the organisation recommended the use of computerised data systems in hospitals to record and track patient information.
By adopting electronic data systems, hospitals in Australia and the United States reduced the number of errors in dispensing medication, and a US teaching hospital recorded 8.6 million dollars in annual savings, the OECD said.
The OECD also suggested that economic incentives be realigned to boost cost-effective care, especially in systems where care is largely unrestricted, by rewarding physicians for providing the right care at the right time and making patients more aware of the costs of certain elective treatments.
The report, "Toward High-Performing Health Systems", will be the topic of discussion on Thursday and Friday when OECD health ministers meet in at the organisation's Paris headquarters.
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