OECD Reviews Of Health Care Quality: Israel 2012 Raising Standards

At a time when ever more information is available about the quality of health care, the challenge for policy makers is to better understand the policies and approaches that sit behind the numbers. This book examines whether care in Israel is safe, effective and responsive to patients needs. It examines what works and what does not work, both to benchmark the efforts of countries and to provide advice on reforms to improve quality of health care. Table of Content : Acronyms and abbreviationsExecutive summaryAssessment and recommendations Chapter 1. Quality of care in Israels health system 1.1. Introduction1.2. Context 1.3. Profiling policies on quality of health care and their impact 1.4. ConclusionsBibliography Chapter 2. Strengthening community-based primary health care 2.1. Introduction 2.2. Primary care in Israel is well-developed, accessible and of high quality 2.3. Performance in some areas needs further improvement and unnecessary hospitalisations raise concern 2.4. Areas for improvement in Israelis primary care system 2.5. Conclusions BibliographyChapter 3. Tackling inequalities in health and health care in Israel 3.1. Introduction3.2. The Israeli health care system is designed to provide equity in health care, and moves are underway to reduce prevailing inequalities3.3. Israel has a good information architecture for measuring inequalities but there are some important gaps 3.4. Rising out-of-pocket payments for health care have implications for equity of access and quality 3.5. Reducing geographical inequalities in health care capacity should be a priority3.6. Health promotion and health education services for disadvantaged groups, and culturally competent care, should be strengthened further3.7. ConclusionsBibliography Chapter 4. The quality of diabetes care in Israel4.1. Introduction 4.2. Diabetes is a growing public health threat in Israel 4.3. Despite good health promotion and prevention, efforts to tackle risky behaviour should be scaled up and widened in focus4.4. Secondary prevention and diagnosis of diabetes strategies in Israel are in line with current international standards 4.5. Israel has good measurement of quality of diabetes care, but co-ordination of care for diabetic patients can be improved4.6. Israel should step up efforts to manage diabetes complications and its co-morbidities 4.7. Conclusions Bibliography