UK Data Service .Stat Guides
Guide to OECD Health Statistics
Introduction
OECD Health Statistics offers the most comprehensive source of comparable statistics on health and health systems across OECD countries. It is an essential tool for health researchers and policy advisors in governments, the private sector and the academic community, to carry out comparative analyses and draw lessons from international comparisons of diverse health care systems.
Main Topics
The OECD Health Statistics are presented in the following tables:
Health status
This datasets presents internationally comparable statistics on morbidity and mortality with variables such as life expectancy, causes of mortality, maternal and infant mortality, potential years of life lost, perceived health status, infant health, dental health, communicable diseases, cancer, injuries, absence from work due to illness.
Non-medical determinants of health
This dataset examines the non-medical determinants of health by comparing food, alcohol, tobacco consumption and body weight amongst countries. The data are expressed in different measures such as calories, grammes, kilo, gender, population.
Health care resources
This dataset includes comparative tables analysing various health care resources such as total health and social employment, physicians by age, gender, categories, midwives, nurses, caring personnel, personal care workers, dentists, pharmacists, physiotherapists, hospital employment, graduates, remuneration of health professionals, hospitals, hospital beds, medical technology with their respective subsets. The statistics are expressed in different units of measure such as number of persons, salaried, self-employed, per population.
Health care utilisation
This dataset includes statistics comparing different countries level of health care utilisation in terms of prevention, immunisation, screening, diagnostics exams, consultations, in-patient utilisation, average length of stay, diagnostic categories, acute care, in-patient care, discharge rates, transplants, dialyses, ICD-9-CM. The data is comparable with respect to units of measures such as days, percentages, population, number per capita, procedures, available beds.
Health Care Quality Indicators
This dataset includes comparative tables analyzing various health care quality indicators such as cancer care, care for acute exacerbation of chronic conditions, care for chronic conditions and care for mental disorders.
Pharmaceutical market
This dataset focuses on the pharmaceutical market comparing countries in terms of pharmaceutical consumption, drugs, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceutical market, revenues.
Long-term care resources and utilisation
This dataset provides statistics comparing long-term care resources and utilisation by country in terms of workers, beds in nursing and residential care facilities and care recipients. In this table data is expressed in different measures such as gender, age and population.
Health expenditure and financing
This dataset compares countries in terms of their current and total expenditures on health by comparing how they allocate their budget with respect to different health care functions while looking at different financing agents and providers.
Social protection
This dataset introduces the different health care coverage systems such as the government/social health insurance and private health insurance. The statistics are expressed in percentage of the population covered or number of persons.
Demographic references
This dataset provides statistics regarding general demographic references in terms of population, age structure, gender, but also in terms of labour force.
Economic references
This dataset presents main economic indicators such as GDP and Purchasing power parities (PPP) and compares countries in terms of those macroeconomic references as well as currency rates, average annual wages.
Access OECD data
Access to the OECD Health Statistics via UKDS.Stat is freely available to all.
Effective July 15th 2015, the UK Data Service made access to OECD online statistics databases free to all users. Please refer to the OECD’s Terms and Conditions, including information on ‘What can you do with OECD published content (data, text and multimedia products).
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