Make countries’ health spending easier to compare, says OECD

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is urging all countries to meet a global standard in the way they account for their health service spending.

In October the OECD, in collaboration with Eurostat (the European Commission’s statistics directorate general) and the World Health Organization, published what it describes as a “monster of a manual” called A System of Health Accounts. It provides detailed guidelines to help countries develop better accounts that policy makers can use to quickly extract useful data.

“One of the weird things in health is that there are a lot of data …