Description:

The mission of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation is to promote global well-being. OECD now has 34 member countries. The organization periodically publishes comparative data on a plethora of topics, including health. I'm going to review some recent statistics on use of health services, with the focus on technology. I'm going to compare United States averages with averages of all the OECD countries.
So starting from the top, let's start with cost. These numbers have been converted to US currency and adjusted for purchasing powers of the member countries. In the United States, we spend more on health services. The difference between the US and OECD median is more than two-fold. A smaller proportion of our health service spending is publicly funded. In the US, it's less than half, while the OECD median is almost 3/4.
In the US, individuals spend about twice as much out of pocket as residents of OECD median. What do we get for this spending? Not longer lives and not better rates of infant mortality. Our life expectancy at birth is shorter by about a year and a half.
Let's move on to population health. Some say that Americans are sicker and die younger because of our behavior. But looking at risk behaviors, we see that Americans are less likely to be using tobacco products, and on a per capita basis, have lower alcohol consumption. Next we will look at investment in technology and how we use technology across the population, with the example of diagnostic scans.
We have more than twice as many MRI scanners per person, and we do twice as many MRIs. We also have more CT scans and do twice as many scans. These utilization rates should not be terribly surprising. Capacity creates demand. Once you have these machines, they will be used. Our spending on pharmaceuticals and related products per person is also more than double the OECD median.
We have seen that we spend more, we do not have the best outcomes, and we have much higher rates of acquisition and use of certain technologies. Finally, we will look at physician and hospital services. On a per person basis, the United States has fewer physicians and fewer physician visits. We are not using more physician services. The United States also has fewer hospital beds per person, and when Americans are in the hospital, we are discharged almost three days earlier. The bottom line, we are spending more and use more technology, yet several of our population health indicators are lower than average, as is our utilization of physician visits.

Here is a link to the media file cryan_OECDStats.mp4