OECD Health Data 2007

18 July 2007

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development announces release of OECD Health Data 2007 Database

OECD Health Data 2007: a comparative analysis of 30 countries

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched its 2007 edition OECD Health Data on CD-ROM on 18 July 2007.

Significant input was provided by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, which is responsible for compiling and supplying the Australian data for this project.

OECD Health Data 2007 covers the 30 member countries of the OECD for the period 1960 to 2005. It is a comprehensive source of inter-country statistics in key areas of health and health care systems. Health professionals and researchers can use the database to undertake their own comparative analyses on:

• Health status
• Health care resources
• Health care utilisation
• Expenditure on health
• Health care financing
• Social protection
• Pharmaceutical market
• Non-medical determinants of health
• Demographic references
• Economic references

Facts emerging from OECD Health Data 2007 include:

• Health spending: Spending continues to rise in OECD countries, driven in large part by advances in medical technology, ageing populations and pharmaceutical spending. Health spending accounted for 9% of GDP on average across OECD countries in 2004, up from 7% in 1990. In 2004-05, Australia spent 9.5% of GDP on health, excluding health research. The public sector is the main source of health funding in all OECD countries except the United States, Mexico and Greece. In Australia, 67.5% of health spending was funded by public sources in 2004, below the average of 72.5% in OECD countries.
• Pharmaceutical spending: The strong rise in pharmaceutical spending has been one of the factors behind the rise in total health spending in Australia as well as in many other OECD countries. In 2004, spending on pharmaceuticals accounted for 13.3% of total health spending in Australia, up from 11.2% in 1995. Much of this was due to the addition of new versions of drugs to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, especially musculoskeletal, anti-hypertensive and lipid-lowering drugs.
• Life expectancy: Australians enjoyed better than average life expectancy, at 83.3 years for females born in 2005 (behind Japan, Switzerland, Spain and France), and 78.5 years for males (behind Iceland, Switzerland, Japan and Sweden). The OECD average was 81.4 years for females and 75.7 years for males.
• Doctors and nurses: There are large variations in numbers of practising doctors and nurses per capita across OECD countries. Numbers range from less than 2 practising physicians per 1,000 population in Turkey, Korea and Mexico, to 4 or more in Belgium and Greece, with Australia having 2.7. In 2005, Australia had 10.4 nurses per 1,000 population, ranking behind eight other countries including Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands and Iceland. A shortage of medical staff is a key concern in many OECD countries.
• Infant mortality: In 2005, the Australian infant mortality rate was 5.0 deaths per 1,000 live births, among the middle third group of OECD countries. Iceland and Sweden had the lowest rates at 2.3 and 2.4 respectively, but Mexico and Turkey approached or exceeded 20.0 deaths per 1,000 live births.
• Smoking and obesity: In 2005, 17.7% of Australians aged 15 years and over smoked daily, with only Canada, Portugal, the United States and Sweden having lower proportions. More than 30% of the adult population smoked regularly in a number of countries, including Greece, Turkey, the Netherlands and Hungary. The proportion of obese people in Australia provides cause for concern - at 22% in 1999 (latest year available). The obesity rate is lower than in the United States (32% in 2004) and about equal to the obesity rate in the United Kingdom (23% in 2005), although it should be noted that most countries rely on self-report data, which tend to underestimate the true proportion.

OECD Health Data 2007 is available on CD-ROM, in a multilingual version (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian), for a single-user or a network installation. It is also available online to subscribers of SourceOECD, in the languages mentioned above, along with Japanese.

Extensive documentation of definitions, national sources and estimation methods for each country is included in the database. Free technical assistance, data and software updates are accessible via the Internet.

Further information

Further information, including the OECD press release and summary, are available at http://www.oecd.org/health/healthdata/ [external link].

OR

Contact Louise York, AIHW, tel. +61 2 6244 1271 or email .