About the project
There is an urgent need for better indicators for the effectiveness of health systems. Typically accounting for about 9 % of GDP in EU member states, health care expenditure forms an important part of the economy and it is thus important to understand how this expenditure leads to better health of European citizens. Although there are several major determinants of disease, such as genetics, lifestyles and access to material resources, we do know now that health care is an important factor also.
This work uses the concept of ‘avoidable mortality’ to measure the contribution health care makes to population and how this varies among countries. Avoidable mortality reflects deaths from conditions that should not occur in the presence of effective and timely health care. We will develop a set of avoidable mortality-based indicators that can be used in future surveillance of the performance of health systems in Europe.
