Report: Low Quality Healthcare Increasing Cost Burden

Poor quality health services are holding back progress on improving health in countries at all income levels, according to a new joint report by the World Health Organisation (WHO), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank Group.

According to the report, presently, inaccurate diagnosis, medication errors, inappropriate or unnecessary treatment, inadequate or unsafe clinical facilities or practices, or providers who lack adequate training and expertise prevail in all countries.

The situation is worst in low and middle-income countries where 10 percent of hospitalised patients can expect to acquire an infection during their stay, as compared to seven percent in high income countries. This is despite hospital acquired infections being easily avoided through better hygiene, improved infection control practices and appropriate use of antimicrobials. At the same time, one in ten patients is harmed during medical treatment in high income countries.

These were just some of the highlights from the report titled, ‘Delivering Quality Health Services – a Global Imperative for Universal Health Coverage.’

The report also highlighted that sickness associated with poor quality health care imposes additional expenditure on families and health systems.

There has been some progress in improving quality, for example in survival rates for cancer and cardiovascular disease. Even so, the broader economic and social costs of poor quality care, including long-term disability, impairment and lost productivity, are estimated to amount to trillions of dollars each year.

“Good health is the foundation of a country’s human capital, and no country can afford low-quality or unsafe healthcare,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said.

“Low-quality care disproportionately impacts the poor, which is not only morally reprehensible, it is economically unsustainable for families and entire countries.”

“At WHO we are committed to ensuring that people everywhere can obtain health services when and where they need them,” WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“We are equally committed to ensuring that those services are good quality. Quite honestly, there can be no universal health coverage without quality care.”

“Without quality health services, universal health coverage will remain an empty promise,” said OECD Secretary-General Ángel Gurría. “The economic and social benefits are clear and we need to see a much stronger focus on investing in and improving quality to create trust in health services and give everyone access to high-quality, people-centred health services.”

Other key findings in the report painted a picture of quality issues in healthcare around the world.
Part of it stated that, “health care workers in seven low- and middle-income African countries were only able to make accurate diagnoses one third to three quarters of the time, and clinical guidelines for common conditions were followed less than 45 percent of the time on average.

“Research in eight high-mortality countries in the Caribbean and Africa found that effective, quality maternal and child health services are far less prevalent than suggested by just looking at access to services. For example, just 28 percent of antenatal care, 26 percent of family planning services and 21 percent of sick-child care across these countries qualified as ‘effective.’

“Around 15 percent of hospital expenditure in high-income countries is due to mistakes in care or patients being infected while in hospitals.”