OECD Health Ministers commit to tackle challenges facing health systems across the globe

OECD Health Ministers meeting in Paris have underlined their commitment to tackling important challenges facing health systems across the globe, which include reforming the delivery of high-quality care for all, while eliminating ineffective care, addressing how to pay for effective health technologies, measuring health system performance on the basis of what it delivers to people as well as making better use of health data and making health systems more people-focused. Ministers from the 35 OECD countries and counterparts from Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Peru, Saudi Arabia and South Africa met under the chairmanship of Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health of the United Kingdom. The Vice-Chairs were Ms. Carmen Castillo Taucher, Minister of Health of Chile; Mr. Hermann Gröhe, Federal Minister of Health of Germany; and Mr. Alain Berset, Federal Councillor, Head of the Federal Department of Home Affairs of Switzerland. During the meeting, Ministers asked the OECD to develop new ways to measure health system performance, the Patient Reported Indicators Survey (PaRIS). This will provide cross-country comparisons of patients’ own experience of medical care and health care outcomes, so that policymakers, providers and patients can understand how health systems make a difference to people’s lives. Ministers also endorsed a new OECD recommendation that governments establish and implement a national health data governance framework to encourage the availability and use of personal health data while promoting the protection of privacy, personal health data and data security.