OECD Health Data 2008

15 August 2008

 

OECD Health Data 2008: a comparative analysis of 30 countries

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched its 2008 edition of OECD Health Data on CD-ROM on 26 June 2008.

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 2008 covers the 30 member countries of the OECD for the period 1960 to 2007. 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 2008 include:

• Health spending: In 2005-06, Australia spent 8.8% of GDP on health. Spending as a proportion of GDP has slowed in many OECD countries. Health spending accounted for 9% of GDP on average across OECD countries in 2006, the same as 2004 and 2005. This marked a pause in a long-term rising trend that has seen health spending rise from 6.6% of GDP on average in OECD countries in 1980. The public sector is the main source of health funding in all OECD countries except the United States and Mexico. In Australia, 67% of health spending was funded by public sources in 2005-06, below the average of 73% in OECD countries.
• Pharmaceutical spending: The slower growth in pharmaceutical spending has been one of the factors behind the low increase in total health spending in Australia as well as in many other OECD countries. In 2005-06, spending on pharmaceuticals accounted for 14% of total health spending in Australia, up from 12% 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 83.5 years for females born in 2006 (behind Japan, France, Spain and Switzerland), and 78.7 years for males (behind Iceland, Switzerland and Japan). The OECD average was 81.7 years for females and 76.1 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 in Belgium and 5 in Greece, with Australia having 2.8. In 2005, Australia had 9.7 nurses per 1,000 population, ranking behind 12 other countries. A shortage of medical staff is a key concern in many OECD countries.
• Infant mortality: In 2006, the Australian infant mortality rate was 4.7 deaths per 1,000 live births, in the bottom half of OECD countries. Iceland and Luxembourg had the lowest rates at 1.4 and 2.5 respectively, while Turkey had the highest rate with 22.6 deaths per 1,000 live births.
• Smoking and obesity: Approximately 18% of Australians aged 15 years and over smoke daily, with only Canada, Portugal, the United States and Sweden having lower proportions. More than 30% of the adult population smoked regularly in Greece, Turkey, the Netherlands and Hungary. The proportion of obese people in Australia provides cause for concern - at 22% in 1999 (the latest measured data available). The obesity rate is lower than in the United States (34% in 2006) and about equal to the obesity rate in the United Kingdom (24% in 2006), although it should be noted that most countries rely on self-report data, which tend to underestimate the true proportion. For self-reported Australian data on obesity, see Australia's Health 2008.

OECD Health Data 2008 is available on CD-ROM, in a multilingual version (English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish), 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 and Russian.

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 Sally Bullock (AIHW), tel. +61 2 6244 1008 or email the International health team.