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The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched its 2010 edition of OECD Health Data on 1 July 2010. 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 2010 covers the 31 member countries of the OECD (and 3 accession countries, i.e. Estonia, Israel and Slovenia) for the period 1960 to 2009. It is a comprehensive source of international 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
  • Long-term care resources and 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 2010 include:  

  • Health spending: In 2007-08, Australia spent 8.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health, slightly lower than the average of 9.0% in OECD countries in 2008. Between 2000 and 2007, health spending per capita in Australia increased in real terms by 2.9% per year on average (a growth rate lower than the OECD average of 4.2%). The public sector is the main source of health funding in all OECD countries except the United States and Mexico. In Australia, 68% of health spending was funded by public sources in 2007-08, slightly below the average of 73% in OECD countries.
     
  • Pharmaceutical spending: Pharmaceutical spending has increased in Australia and many other OECD countries over the last decade. In 2007-08, spending on pharmaceuticals accounted for 14.3% of total health spending in Australia, up from 11.2% in 1995-96. This is partly due to the effects of new drugs listed under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
     
  • Life expectancy: Australians enjoy better than average life expectancy. An Australian female born in 2008 could expect to live to 83.7 years - the sixth highest female life expectancy of OECD countries (behind Japan, Switzerland, France, Spain and Italy). An Australian male born in 2008 could expect to live to 79.2 years - the fifth highest male life expectancy (behind Switzerland, Iceland, Sweden and Japan). The difference of 4.5 years between female and male life expectancy in Australia is slightly lower than the OECD average of 5.6 years.
     
  • Infant mortality: In 2008, the Australian infant mortality rate was 4.1 deaths per 1,000 live births, lower than the OECD average of 4.7. Infant mortality is lowest in Japan, Luxembourg and in Nordic countries (Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Finland).
     
  • Smoking: Australia has achieved remarkable progress in reducing smoking in the past two decades - the proportion of adults who smoke daily has halved from 35% in 1983 to 17% in 2007-08. The smoking rate is now one of the lowest in the OECD behind only Sweden and the United States.
     
  • Obesity: The growing prevalence of obesity in most OECD countries is a cause for concern. The latest data for Australia based on actual rather than self-reported measures of height and weight showed that 25% of Australian adults were obese in 2007-08. When compared to other countries reporting measured data, Australia's obesity rate is lower than in the United States (34%), Mexico (30%), New Zealand (27%) and similar to the obesity rate in the United Kingdom and Mexico (both 25%).
     
  • Doctors and nurses: A shortage of medical staff is a key concern in many OECD countries. In Australia, there are slightly fewer practising physicians per capita than in most other OECD countries (3.0 per 1,000 population compared to the OECD average of 3.2).There were 10.1 practising nurses per 1,000 population in Australia in 2007, a figure slightly higher than the OECD average of 9.0 in 2008.
     
  • Hospital beds: In 2006-07, the number of acute care hospital beds in Australia was 3.5 per 1,000 population, similar to the OECD average of 3.6 per 1,000 population in 2008. As in most OECD countries, the number of hospital beds per capita in Australia has fallen over time. This decline has coincided with a reduction in the average length of stay in hospital and an increase in the proportion of surgical procedures which are performed on a same-day basis.

OECD Health Data 2010 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. A spreadsheet of frequently requested data is freely available from the OECD website http://www.oecd.org/health/healthdata/.

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/.

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Contact Karen Bishop (AIHW), tel. +61 2 6244 1085 or email the International health team.