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NEW YORK - Things aren’t looking any better for the United States healthcare system since the last time it was compared with those of other industrialized nations.
An update to an ongoing study of nations’ performances in several areas of healthcare - including implementations of information technology - again has ranked the United States dead last among Australia, New Zealand, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada.
Research for the Commonwealth Fund report, titled, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care, previously was conducted in 2006 and 2004. The new version of the study, released last month, looked at nations’ healthcare quality, access, efficiency, equity, outcomes, healthy lifestyles and implementations of IT.
The United States is lagging in adoption of IT systems and national policies that promote quality improvement, the report found. Meanwhile, IT systems in countries like Germany, the United Kingdom and New Zealand “enhance the ability of physicians to monitor chronic conditions and medication use.”
“These findings indicate that, from the perspective of both physicians and patients, the U.S. healthcare system could do much better in achieving better value for the nation’s substantial investment in health,” the report said. Most of the information in the report was drawn from surveys of the nations’ patients and primary care physicians.
Low levels of healthcare IT adoption bogged down the abilities of the United States and Canada to perform well in many areas of the study and ultimately contributed to the two nations’ low scores, especially in chronic care measures.
By comparison, the United Kingdom remained a top performer, perhaps due to that country’s extensive IT advancement efforts. For instance, while 91 percent of U.K. physicians reported receiving computerized alerts to warn them of potential safety hazards in patients’ care, only 23 percent of U.S. physicians reported receiving such alerts.
“The United States stands out as the only nation in these studies that does not ensure access to health care through universal coverage and promotion of a ‘medical home’ for patients,” said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis, one of the authors of the report.
The authors concluded that the United States could learn from innovations in other countries and must “accelerate its efforts to adopt health information technology and ensure an integrated medical record and information system that is accessible to providers and patients.”
