Abstracts by key term: Country ranking
Health statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are often used to classify healthcare provision in Germany. Accordingly, the German case number rates for certain procedures are among the top internationally. These country rankings are repeatedly taken up in the specialist and daily press. A frequently cited example is hip replacement surgery, which, according to OECD statistics, is only carried out more frequently in Switzerland than in Germany (Fig. 1). Another question that is often discussed is the amount of health care spending. Here, the German healthcare system is considered expensive by international comparison, as shown by the OECD country ranking of healthcare spending per capita, in which Germany ranks 6th (Fig. 2). However, ranking using OECD data as a benchmark is fraught with a number of methodological problems. These problems result, on the one hand, from incomplete data in the reports to the OECD and from their lack of comparability. On the other hand, the OECD data generally do not take into account the influence of the different age structure in the individual countries, although the use of services and the level of health expenditure are age-dependent.