“VERY HIGH” cancer mortality rates in women and avoidable hospital admissions are identified as “important gaps” in the quality of Irish healthcare in a paper by health experts from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Speaking at a conference in Dublin yesterday, OECD health economist Mark Pearson said Irish people were living with an inequitable and inefficient healthcare system and that a proposed move to a Dutch-style system was “likely to be more equitable” but may not improve efficiency.
Ireland had achieved “stunning” increases in life expectancy since 1994, Mr Pearson said. But if the Irish healthcare system was as efficient as the most efficient country in the OECD, it could add another three years to life expectancy. “Or alternatively, you could keep your current life expectancy and spend less.”
Mr Pearson told the conference, organised by the Economic and Social Research Institute, that he was there to give “an outsider’s view” of Irish healthcare.
Despite an “enormous surge” in spending – in which Ireland’s healthcare expenditure reached 9.5 per cent of gross domestic product in 2009 – the resources devoted to healthcare in Ireland remained low according to some measures. Ireland has one of the lowest levels of GPs per 1,000 population among OECD countries, the report states, with the result that unplanned hospital admissions for certain lung diseases and diabetes are higher.
For diseases such as breast cancer and cervical cancer, mortality in Ireland is significantly higher than the OECD average, while five-year survival rates for such cancers are below average.
“However you look at it, Ireland does pretty badly,” he said.
The report, co-authored by Mr Pearson, Michael Borowitz and Valerie Moran, added that it will take a number of years before the introduction of preventative screening programmes materialises into improvements in cancer survival rates.
Mr Pearson also said Ireland’s “elevated” risk factors from smoking and alcohol consumption rates could be playing a role in explaining higher mortality patterns. “The Irish lifestyle might be fun, but there’s no way you could describe it as healthy.”
The introduction of generic drugs presents the Government with a “good opportunity” to make substantial savings in pharmaceutical expenditure, the report states, given OECD data shows per-capita spending on drugs in Ireland in 2009 was the fourth highest among OECD countries after the US, Canada and Greece.
The Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association responded by saying the figures contained in the report predated concessions made by the industry.
Also speaking at the conference, Trinity College Dublin health economist Charles Normand said he believed the healthcare system could achieve efficiency gains of 2 to 3 per cent a year, as well as a once-off “backlog” efficiency gain of 10 to 15 per cent, “without harming patients”.
However, the Government must “start thinking about how to invest to save”, he said.
