France heads WHO's league table of health systems

doi:10.1136/bmj.320.7251.1687

BMJ 2000;320:1687 ( 24 June )

News

France heads WHO's league table of health systems

Zosia Kmietowicz, London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

If you are going to be ill, the best place to be is France $---$ the country ranked first in an analysis of the world's healthcaresystems carried out by the World Health Organization(WHO).

Among major countries, France was followed by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria, and Japan, with several small countries (includingSan Marino, Andorra, Malta, and Singapore) rated among the top10 healthcareproviders.

The analysis, which used five performance indicators to measure health systems, showed that it is not what you spend on healthcare but how you spend the resources available to you that isimportant.

Despite spending more of its gross domestic product on health than any other country (13.7%), the United States ranked only37 out of 191 WHO member states; the United Kingdom, which spendsjust 6% of gross domestic product on health services, came out18th. France spends 9.8%.

The surprise finding of the analysis, said . . . [Full text of this article]