Health Consumer Powerhouse Euro Health Consumer Index 2008 report
The HCP would love to have national consumer organisations represented in our expert panels. Sadly, these groups seldom engage in healthcare matters. It means that HCP consults individual care consumers and patient organisations. The latter are included in a major study commissioned from Patient View. For next year, HCP hopes to involve consumers directly, through, for example, patient focus groups. How are the indicators selected? They are developed through dialogue with numerous stakeholders and the Index expert panels. Since the initial Index in 2005, the HCP has looked into five areas: patient rights and information, waiting times, medical outcomes, the generosity of the healthcare system and access to medicines. How has the range of indicators changed? Between 2006 and 2007 three indicators were excluded and four new ones introduced (and two pairs of indicators have been merged into one) after discussion with expert panels and authorities. For 2008, 6 new indicators and one subcategory has been added. There are more indicators the HCP would like to include, but often there are difficulties to access relevant data (see Index report). Also, for practical reasons the Index matrix has limits. Some of the data used for the indicators is relatively dated; other sources are very current. Why such a variation? The Index always uses “latest available” data. Highlighting the fact that such data can be quite dated is one purpose of the entire Index exercise. This is consumer information, and the philosophy is that presenting data – even where inconsistent – is better than saying nothing at all. This poor reporting of public data is mainly a challenge to European governments and institutions than part of an Index weakness. It highlights the situation that, for example, the most up-to-date information that Belgian nationals can access about their healthcare system is from 1997! Differing weights are given to indicators. Why? There are numerous surveys that show that patients generally value medical results quality and accessibility to healthcare as the most important aspects on healthcare services. This is true also for countries, where waiting list problems are moderate. What is measured – public health or health care performance? Definitely the latter. Governments, EU and WHO deliver data on public health – undeniably important at the policy level. For consumers, HCP finds that assessment of what is delivered by national healthcare is more relevant.
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