Understanding the way the healthcare system works can be a brilliantly beneficial thing to achieve. After all, people only learn how to interact with certain things after extremely long periods of anxiety, until at some point the object becomes familiar and therefore no longer stressful.
The Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS)
Created by the National Committee for Quality Assurance in 1991, HEDIS is almost universally used as a tool for measuring the performance of health care plans. This can be incredibly useful, as it allows you to compare the quality of different health care plans in regard to 81 different measurements. HEDIS software is almost singularly useful when it comes to the comparison of healthcare plans. So, if you are thinking of making such a comparison, you now know what to use.
Healthcare Spending
Compared to other OECD member nations, the USA spends nearly double what the next higher spender does on healthcare per capita. This is troubling as the USA is still classified as lower in terms of the quality of healthcare.
Quality of Health
These healthcare issues tend to be covered by the term quality of health, which refers to the general health of the USA. Two of the biggest indicators of this issue lie in the life expectancy and rates of chronic health issues.
Chronic Health Issues. Unfortunately, the USA is a world leader in terms of chronic diseases and obesity. It has one of the highest rates of hospitalization as a result of diabetes and hypertension in the world, second only to Germany. This means that American’s suffer from chronic health issues far more than most other countries.
Life Expectancy. On top of that, American life expectancy is lower than many countries, coming in at around 78.7 years old, as opposed to 81.3 in the United Kingdom or 83.8 in Switzerland. This means that, on average, American’s die earlier as well.
Overall, this does not paint a positive picture of American vitality and healthfulness. Despite this, Americans visit the doctor far less than many other countries, which is likely a result of the costs associated with American healthcare.
The Best Place to Be a Mother
Apparently, Norway is the best place in the world to become a new mother. This is for a lot of reasons, but some of the most impactful are their low rates of infant and maternal mortality and their incredibly generous parental leave benefits, which allow both the mother and father to take paid time off from work after the birth of their child.
Availability of Care
Finally, one of the most important points to consider when it comes to the quality of care you are likely to receive, is the availability of care. This is determined by a number of factors, the most impactful of which is examined below.
Number of Nurses and Doctors available. Per 10,000 people, America has roughly 26 doctors and 86 nurses, showing not only that there are far more nurses than doctors but also that there are not nearly enough medical professionals to be able to treat even a nominal percentage of Americans if they all fell ill together.