Identifying key trends in value-based health care is proving difficult, given the backdrop of decentralization, liberalization and in some cases continued privatization within the healthcare sector in Europe. Further to our recent feature US Trends Towards Value-based Healthcare we take a snapshot at what’s happening in the UK/European and emerging economies’ healthcare sector.
By Kumar S
Unlike the US, whereby access to healthcare services are cost prohibitive, Europe fares much better than the former. As mentioned in our recent US health care feature, the US had a top per capita expenditure among all Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, spending almost 17% of its GDP on healthcare. Higher expenditure in the US is primarily attributed to higher operational costs.
Among European countries, Netherlands is the top spender, with 11.1 percent of its GDP spent on healthcare followed by Switzerland at 11.1 percent, and Sweden at 11 percent, in 2013, according to a recent media report. UK spent over 9 percent of its GDP on healthcare during the same period.
The spending is in line with the average healthcare costs in Europe which may range between 5 percent and 11 percent from one country to another. The rising cost to access healthcare services has become a global phenomenon in the light of ongoing advancements in medical science, increasing human life expectancy. In Europe, males had an average life expectancy of 75 years and for women it was 81 years as of 2017.
Like the US, Europe is also reeling under the constraints of austerity measures and rising cost of healthcare services. Economic crises in several European countries add to budget woes. Public expenditure is being cut in some EU countries to mitigate the negative effects of a reduced budget, which compounds pressure on the private sector...
...to read more, click here https://indvstrvs.com/rising-costs-of-healthcare-global-phenomenon/