Proceedings of the Ottawa Conference, November 2001. How can we measure the performance of different health systems, and how can we use such information to support on-going health systems improvement? Those are the central questions addressed in this volume. Health policy makers have a growing...

The standard classifications of health systems don't allow for the complexity and variety that exists around the world. Federico Toth sets out a new framework for understanding the many ways in which health systems can be organized and systematically analyses the health systems chosen by 27 OECD...

Variations in health care use within a country are complicated. In some cases they may reflect differences in health needs, in patient preferences or in the diffusion of a therapeutic innovation; in others they may not. There is evidence that some of the observed variations are unwarranted,...

This paper investigates regional disparities in access to healthcare, measured by self-reported unmet medical needs. It looks at disparities across 86 regions in 5 European countries: Czech Republic, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. The results show that in addition to individual...

Variations in health care use within a country are complicated. In some cases they may reflect differences in health needs, in patient preferences or in the diffusion of a therapeutic innovation; in others they may not. There is evidence that some of the observed variations are unwarranted,...