Healthcare has been solved! We can all go home.
And the best health system in the world goes to … Australia, according to the latest Commonwealth Fund report.
The 2024 edition of the US-based foundation’s Mirror, Mirror report, which was released overnight, compared the healthcare systems of 10 countries – Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States – across five domains.
These were: access to care, care process, administrative efficiency, equity and health outcomes.
Australia came out on top for both equity and health outcomes, second place for administrative efficiency, fifth for care process and ninth for access to care.
It was named number one overall, followed by the Netherlands in second and the UK in third.
This victory was despite the fact that Australia’s spend on healthcare as a percentage of GDP was the lowest of the 10 countries, at just 9.8%.
The reason for Australia’s lower ranking in the access to care component was largely due to public waitlists greatly exceeding private waitlists.
“Roughly half of Australian patients who do not choose to purchase voluntary health insurance may have to wait longer to receive services,” the Commonwealth Fund report said.
“Affordability is also a noted problem, although new billing incentives have led to improvement in recent years.”
That reference did not escape the notice of Health Minister Mark Butler.
“Our government’s investment in Medicare has meant more than 4 million additional bulk-billed visits to the GP since 1 November last year,” he said.
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“In its 40th year, Australians should all be proud that we have a Medicare system that provides universal care to all Australians, no matter your means.
“There is still so much work to do. Australians rightly deserve a world-class health system.”
The countries that performed higher than Australia in the care process criteria – namely top two performers New Zealand and the Netherlands – were lauded for their incentive payment systems and their patient registration model.
Australia’s electronic point-of-care claims processing technology – think HICAPS – was cited as a major reason for its higher rank in the administrative efficiency criteria.
Patients in Switzerland and the US, which were the poorest performers in that category, were comparatively more likely to seek treatment in emergency departments rather than GP clinics.
“The fragmentation of health care delivery across Switzerland’s many cantons and municipalities may also be hindering efficiency for providers and patients alike,” the report read.
The US took out second place for care process but was ranked last or second-last on every other measure, putting it firmly in tenth place.
