Despite spending more for health care, Americans do not have the best medical care in the world, according to researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other institutions.
The study is the first to use a universal set of standards to compare the quality of health care in the five countries surveyed. The researchers found that no country scored the best or worst overall and that each country was the best and worst in at least one area. The study is published in the May/June 2004 issue of the journal Health Affairs.
Peter S. Hussey, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Health Policy and Management, said, “It is well known that the United States spends much more on health care per capita than other countries, and it is commonly assumed that we have the best health care system in the world. However, the results of our study show that the United States performs better than other countries in only a few areas, while performing worse in others. This raises the question of what Americans receive for all of the money devoted to health care.”
The international group of researchers worked together as The Commonwealth Fund International Working Group on Quality Indicators. Data on 21 health indicators that reflect the quality of medical care in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States were collected and examined. Five-year cancer survival rates, 30-day case-fatality rates after heart attack or stroke, breast cancer screening rates and asthma mortality rates are a few of the indicators the researchers studied. The researchers broke the 21 health indicators into three categories, which include survival rates for various cancers and transplants, avoidable events such as suicides, asthma and smoking rates and process indicators that include vaccination and screening rates.
The United States had the highest breast cancer survival rate, the highest cervical cancer screening rate and the lowest smoking rate. For breast cancer survival rates, the United States (86 percent) was 11 percentage points better than the worst country, which was the United Kingdom. For cervical cancer screening, the United States (93 percent) was 26 percentage points better than the United Kingdom, the worst country. The United States tied with Canada for having the lowest smoking rate, which was 15 percent lower than the lowest-scoring country, which was the United Kingdom. T