Comparative Health Systems Study Guide Flashcards
Health System
all activities whose primary purpose is to promote, restore, or maintain health and disease prevention, enviornmental safety.
What does a health system include?
health services, traditional healers, home care, all use of medication, health promotion and disease prevention, environmental safety.
Is education part of the health system?
No! It supports its purpose, but is not part of it
Americans consider the health system as
hospitals and clinics
What do other countries consider the health system as?
Health process in the entire country.
Health CARE system
The provision of and investment in health services.
Can be preventive, curative, or palliative
Proximate health factors
health system, healht behavior, psycosocial factors
Intermediate health factors
educaiton, occupation, income, ethnicity, environment, food, working conditions
Structural health factors
socioeconomic and political context
What is the #1 thing you can do to improve maternal and child health?
focus on female education… 50% of decline in U5MR is due to female education
Wealth and its connection to health
wealthier countries on average have individuals with longer life expectancy
income and survival are strongly correlated
It helps to a certain point w/ regards to increased life expectancy, but isnt everything
What is NOT captured in life expectancy numbers?
Quality of Life
What led to an improvement in health before modern medicine, and to what degree?
sanitation, germ theory, handwashing, birth spacing, housing improvements
IMR dropped from high 190s/1000 live births in 1900 to 30s/1000 prior to penecillian, all without drugs
What are the 3 goals of any health system?
1) Improve the health of the population and its distribution
2) Respond to people’s non-health expectations (customer service)
3) provide financial protection against the costs of ill health
What other goals should a health system encompass?
- Equitable provision of services
- Efficient provision of services
- should function as social institutions that communicate government’s committments to their citizens.
Why does health care need government intervention
Capital markets need perfect competition and information to function freely - health care has market failures that prevent optimal function without oversight
What are the marekt failures of health systems that create imperfect competition?
- Externalities
- Adverse Selection
- Moral Hazard
- Agency/Information Assymertry
- Monopolies
What is the government’s role in healthcare ?
AS health is a basic right of most countries’ citizenship, governments must ensure access to essential health care and quality of care, given that the market ISNT perfect
Government’s roles range by region and level of income
What is the role of government in the health system in SSA?
the government is often the payor and provider of health care… there isnt health insurance.
What % of all health spending runs through the government in the US?
45%
What is the role of the government in Canada, the UK, and France?
they are the main payor of health care and are sometimes the employer of physicians
What are the WHO building blocks of health?
She Helps Inmate Manage Fine Lines
Service Delivery Health workforce Information Medical products, vaccines, technologies Financing Leadership/Governmance
What are the goals relative to the WHO building blocks?
and IRIS
Improved Health (level and equity)
Responsiveness
Social and Financial Risk Protection
Improved Efficiency
Service Delivery
Offer safe, effective, quality personal and non-personal health interventions to those who need them, who and where needed, with a minimum waste of resources