The research objective of the programme is to generate evidence of direct relevance to designing health systems that are resilient to pressure resulting from increasing demands for health care due to ageing populations and technological innovations together with greater budget stringency imposed by the sustained economic depression in Europe. The programme will conduct research that seeks to address the following generic questions:
1) Finance: How can health systems be funded in ways that are sustainable yet equitable?
European health systems are founded on the principle of solidarity: treatment of the sick is paid for collectively according to ability to pay. Access to health care does not depend on contributions made to its financing. Sustainability of these arrangements may be threatened if medical expenditures continue to outpace economic growth.
2) Provision: How can health care be organised to ensure that available resources are put to the most efficient use in delivering quality health care?
Under pressure to contain costs, European health systems are wrestling with how to encourage competition between providers with the aim of reaping efficiency gains while regulating the market in order to improve quality and maintain patient safety.
3) Access: How can systems ensure that health care remains affordable and accessible to all in straitened times?
Ensuring equitable access to health care is a central motivation for European public health systems. Realisation of this objective is threatened by the strain arising from meeting the increasing needs of an ageing population from a health budget curtailed in many countries by fiscal austerity. The imbalance between demand and supply can result in lengthening waiting times for treatments that only the better-off can avoid by purchasing private care.
4) Cost: How to constrain health care costs while meeting the needs and rising expectations of ageing populations?
Given population ageing and the consequent growth in the prevalence of chronic illness, the resilience of health systems depends crucially on maintaining population health, relieving the demand on health services and so constraining medical care costs.
ESHER - ETN
The goal of the network is to address these substantive questions of health policy by exploiting the ever expanding array of rich data that is becoming available to researchers who, more than ever before, have the opportunity to bring evidence to bear on what drives the distributions of health, health services and health care costs, as well as how health policies impact on these distributions. Opportunities to link different administrative datasets at the individual level and to match these with survey data now makes it possible to combine information on hospital admissions, pharmaceutical use, uptake of preventive care and medical care costs, and to set this against information on lifestyles, employment and income to give insight into the determinants of health care utilisation and costs.
The programme will innovate by advancing methodology to make the most of these enormous data opportunities and by developing the requisite quantitative skills of young health service researchers.
Acronym:
ESHER
Author:
García Armesto, Sandra
Principal researcher:
Eddy Van Doorslaer
Scope:
Internacional
Entidades participantes:
Erasmus University of Rotterdam (Coordinator)
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud (WP2 leader)
University of York
University of Copenhagen
University of Lund
University of Munich
Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis
Paris School of Economics
OECD Health Division
European Observatory of Health Systems and Policy WHO
Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris
The Danish National Centre for Social Research
Evidera
German Institute for Employment Research
Nuffield Trust
Skåne regional health authority
Swedish Agency for Health and Care Services Analysis
The research objective of the programme is to generate evidence of direct relevance to designing health systems that are resilient to pressure resulting from increasing demands for health care due to ageing populations and technological innovations together with greater budget stringency imposed by the sustained economic depression in Europe. The programme will conduct research that seeks to address the following generic questions:
1) Finance: How can health systems be funded in ways that are sustainable yet equitable?
European health systems are founded on the principle of solidarity: treatment of the sick is paid for collectively according to ability to pay. Access to health care does not depend on contributions made to its financing. Sustainability of these arrangements may be threatened if medical expenditures continue to outpace economic growth.
2) Provision: How can health care be organised to ensure that available resources are put to the most efficient use in delivering quality health care?
Under pressure to contain costs, European health systems are wrestling with how to encourage competition between providers with the aim of reaping efficiency gains while regulating the market in order to improve quality and maintain patient safety.
3) Access: How can systems ensure that health care remains affordable and accessible to all in straitened times?
Ensuring equitable access to health care is a central motivation for European public health systems. Realisation of this objective is threatened by the strain arising from meeting the increasing needs of an ageing population from a health budget curtailed in many countries by fiscal austerity. The imbalance between demand and supply can result in lengthening waiting times for treatments that only the better-off can avoid by purchasing private care.
4) Cost: How to constrain health care costs while meeting the needs and rising expectations of ageing populations?
Given population ageing and the consequent growth in the prevalence of chronic illness, the resilience of health systems depends crucially on maintaining population health, relieving the demand on health services and so constraining medical care costs.
ESHER - ETN
The goal of the network is to address these substantive questions of health policy by exploiting the ever expanding array of rich data that is becoming available to researchers who, more than ever before, have the opportunity to bring evidence to bear on what drives the distributions of health, health services and health care costs, as well as how health policies impact on these distributions. Opportunities to link different administrative datasets at the individual level and to match these with survey data now makes it possible to combine information on hospital admissions, pharmaceutical use, uptake of preventive care and medical care costs, and to set this against information on lifestyles, employment and income to give insight into the determinants of health care utilisation and costs.
The programme will innovate by advancing methodology to make the most of these enormous data opportunities and by developing the requisite quantitative skills of young health service researchers.