Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Global Health-Care Snapshot

Global Health-Care Snapshot

Three common measures of health-care quality show how well various countries stack up.
What health-care systems look like around the world
What health-care systems look like around the world
What health-care systems look like around the world

Here's how six major countries handle health and what their citizens think of their care.

About 57% of Canadians believe they are receiving high-quality health care, a percentage that's held relatively steady since 2002, according to a poll of more than 1,200 Canadians conducted in late 2007 by Pollara Research. About one in five cited wait times as the most important health issue facing the nation, with 19% saying a doctor shortage is most critical. Nearly half — 48% — said they thought access to timely, quality health care will improve over the next five years.
Some 83% of French citizens express satisfaction with their social security system, according to a 2007 study.
Germany: Surveys often show a mixed level of satisfaction among patients, according to the Ministry, which attributes the mixed feelings to high expectations and gripes that arise from concerns about rising costs in the German health-care system.
Satisfaction
Current data is scant on the national level. More than half of Japanese patients were generally satisfied with the quality of their health care, according to a 1995 survey from the Ministry of Health and Welfare. But private and local surveys conducted since then have shown dissatisfaction levels creeping up, mostly due to rising costs and long waiting times at some clinics.
Satisfaction
Britain: Nearly three out of four people were “completely” satisfied that their general practitioner or health center had dealt with the main reason for their visit, according to a 2008 survey from the Picker Institute.
Satisfaction
Americans are the least satisfied with their health-care system among 10 nations studied in 2008, according to the Commonwealth Fund. A third of Americans said they believe the U.S. system "has so much wrong with it that we need to completely rebuild it," and their feelings have remained stable over the last decade, with roughly twice as many saying they want a complete overhaul compared with other nations.

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