Strengthening health systems through innovation

The first section sets the stage for the country level comparisons by providing an overview of the key challenges facing the health care systems of developed countries around the world, namely: shifts in population demographics and social characteristics; the balance between containing costs while 8 International Centre for Health Innovation maintaining access and quality, and the fragmentation in [...] Netherlands, Germany, France and Switzerland all ranked in the top five countries in the 2010 Euro-Canada Health Index, while the U. K. and Canada ranked 17th and 25th, respectively, out of the 27 countries included in the study (Australia and the U. S. were excluded in the analysis). [...] Of the eight countries profiled herein, Canada’s rank is third-lowest in number of nurses, tied for the second-lowest in bed capacity and tied for the lowest in number of doctors.5 Unlike other health systems where restrictions on choice and use of health care services are determined by insurance coverage and managed care plans, it is suggested that in Canada the use of health care services is lim [...] Key Features, Differences and Limitations The governance structures of each of the three countries with universal health systems have two general distinctions from the other countries in the analysis: the level of control exerted over public/private services and the role of the consumer. [...] The governance structure of the two types of health systems have important implications for these systems in terms of the role of the consumer who are active decision-makers in social insurance models of government compared to the more passive role in universal health systems where consumers are more often the recipients of care.