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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - ECHO
T2 - health care performance assessment in several European health systems
AU - Bernal-Delgado, E.
AU - Christiansen, T.
AU - Bloor, K.
AU - Caixeiro Mateus, Ceu
AU - Yazbeck, A. M.
AU - Munck, J.
AU - Bremner, J.
AU - ECHO Consortium
N1 - © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Public Health Association. All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/2
Y1 - 2015/2
N2 - BACKGROUND: Strengthening health-care effectiveness, increasing accessibility and improving resilience are key goals in the upcoming European Union health-care agenda. European Collaboration for Health-Care Optimization (ECHO), an international research project on health-care performance assessment funded by the seventh framework programme, has provided evidence and methodology to allow the attainment of those goals. This article aims at describing ECHO, analysing its main instruments and discussing some of the ECHO policy implications.METHODS: Using patient-level administrative data, a series of observational studies (ecological and cross-section with associated time-series analyses) were conducted to analyze population and patients' exposure to health care. Operationally, several performance dimensions such as health-care inequalities, quality, safety and efficiency were analyzed using a set of validated indicators. The main instruments in ECHO were: (i) building a homogeneous data infrastructure; (ii) constructing coding crosswalks to allow comparisons between countries; (iii) making geographical units of analysis comparable; and (iv) allowing comparisons through the use of common benchmarks.CONCLUSION: ECHO has provided some innovations in international comparisons of health-care performance, mainly derived from the massive pooling of patient-level data and thus: (i) has expanded the usual approach based on average figures, providing insight into within and across country variation at various meaningful policy levels, (ii) the important effort made on data homogenization has increased comparability, increasing stakeholders' reliance on data and improving the acceptance of findings and (iii) has been able to provide more flexible and reliable benchmarking, allowing stakeholders to make critical use of the evidence.
AB - BACKGROUND: Strengthening health-care effectiveness, increasing accessibility and improving resilience are key goals in the upcoming European Union health-care agenda. European Collaboration for Health-Care Optimization (ECHO), an international research project on health-care performance assessment funded by the seventh framework programme, has provided evidence and methodology to allow the attainment of those goals. This article aims at describing ECHO, analysing its main instruments and discussing some of the ECHO policy implications.METHODS: Using patient-level administrative data, a series of observational studies (ecological and cross-section with associated time-series analyses) were conducted to analyze population and patients' exposure to health care. Operationally, several performance dimensions such as health-care inequalities, quality, safety and efficiency were analyzed using a set of validated indicators. The main instruments in ECHO were: (i) building a homogeneous data infrastructure; (ii) constructing coding crosswalks to allow comparisons between countries; (iii) making geographical units of analysis comparable; and (iv) allowing comparisons through the use of common benchmarks.CONCLUSION: ECHO has provided some innovations in international comparisons of health-care performance, mainly derived from the massive pooling of patient-level data and thus: (i) has expanded the usual approach based on average figures, providing insight into within and across country variation at various meaningful policy levels, (ii) the important effort made on data homogenization has increased comparability, increasing stakeholders' reliance on data and improving the acceptance of findings and (iii) has been able to provide more flexible and reliable benchmarking, allowing stakeholders to make critical use of the evidence.
KW - Benchmarking
KW - Cooperative Behavior
KW - Delivery of Health Care
KW - Europe
KW - European Union
KW - Health Policy
KW - Health Services Administration
KW - Health Services Research
KW - Healthcare Disparities
KW - Humans
KW - Internationality
KW - Quality Indicators, Health Care
KW - Quality of Health Care
KW - Safety Management
U2 - 10.1093/eurpub/cku219
DO - 10.1093/eurpub/cku219
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 25690123
VL - 25
SP - 3
EP - 7
JO - European Journal of Public Health
JF - European Journal of Public Health
SN - 1101-1262
IS - Suppl 1
ER -