Performance of EU healthcare systems to be investigated by EuroHOPE project
9 February 2010
The performance of European healthcare systems will be evaluated in the EuroHOPE study (European healthcare outcomes, performance and effectiveness) co-ordinated by the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) and funded by the EU.
The project is an extension of the Perfect study carried out by THL in Finland to the European level. Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation has funded the Perfect project through its FinnWell programme.
The Perfect project developed a method that can be used to measure the cost-effectiveness of care on the basis of information recorded in registers. The project also created a comparative database that can be used for comparing the cost-effectiveness of care between hospitals, hospital districts, regions and population groups.
The comparative database can be utilised in a number of ways in the future. At the system level, it can be used to evaluate whether the cost-effectiveness of healthcare services has increased or decreased. The same evaluation can also be performed on separate disease groups. In addition, hospitals or regions can monitor the development of the cost-effectiveness of their own operations and compare it with that of other hospitals and regions.
In the initial stages, the EuroHOPE study will be carried out in seven European countries: Finland, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (Scotland), Hungary and Italy.
The project utilises microeconometric methods to measure the performance, quality, use of resources and costs of healthcare in the treatment of five key public health problems or diseases: acute myocardial infarction, stroke, hip fracture, breast cancer and low-birth-weight premature infants.
More information
The Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare:
www.thl.fi/en_US/web/en
Unto Häkkinen, Research Professor, EuroHOPE Project Director, THL
Email: firstname.lastname@thl.fi
Tel. +358 20 610 7327