Open AccessThe EU Member States’ national healthcare systems compared using the single synthetic index
Author(s) -
Maciej Jankowiak
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
economics and business review/the poznań university of economics review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2392-1641
pISSN - 1643-5877
DOI - 10.18559/ebr.2021.2.4
Subject(s) - index (typography) , health care , member states , healthcare system , european union , public healthcare , business , public economics , computer science , economics , economic growth , international trade , world wide web
Implementation of health protection requires effective quantitative methods of its evaluation. Assessment could be based on usage of synthetic indices which aggregate couple input variables into a single measure. In this paper, the exploitation of a new synthetic index (by the author called HAI—the Healthcare Aggregated Index) was proposed with the aim of the assessment and long-term interstate comparisons of healthcare systems of the EU countries. Using taxonomic methodology, HAI involves three variables: the number of hospital beds, the number of physicians and the public expenditures on healthcare. HAI utilisation includes dynamic interstate comparisons of national healthcare systems of the different exploitations of human, physical and financial resources. The HAI application to assessment of twenty European Union Member States’ healthcare systems revealed an effect of substitution between healthcare resources within the slight international differentiation of the health protection level and the minor dynamic of changes in time series.