In Search of Efficiency: Improving Health Care in Hungary
Abstract
One area where spending discipline will become increasingly important in Hungary is health care. This paper describes the structure of the health care system, highlights outstanding weaknesses and considers ways to make financing more stable and sustainable. The slow progress in modernising the health care system is reflected in the low efficiency of hospitals, excessive recourse to inpatient care and heavy prescription of drugs by doctors. The paper discusses ways to modernise the hospitals, including options for giving them more scope in managing resources and greater incentives to introduce efficiency enhancing improvements. To help reduce unnecessary use of inpatient services, mechanisms are suggested for strengthening the “gatekeeping” function of general practitioners and for reinforcing controls over treatment decisions. The paper also considers ways to contain the cost of subsidies to pharmaceutical companies. A la recherche de l'efficience : Améliorer le service de santé en Hongrie La santé est l’un des secteurs où la maîtrise des dépenses va devenir de plus en plus importante. Le présent document décrit la structure du système de soins de santé, met en lumière ses principales faiblesses et examine les moyens de stabiliser et de pérenniser son financement. La lenteur des progrès accomplis dans la voie de la modernisation du système de soins de santé se traduit par un manque d’efficience des hôpitaux, un recours excessif aux soins hospitaliers et une prescription abusive de médicaments. Diverses pistes sont envisagées pour moderniser les hôpitaux, consistant notamment à leur laisser plus de latitude pour gérer leurs ressources et à les inciter davantage à améliorer leur efficience. Afin d’optimiser l’utilisation des services hospitaliers, des mécanismes sont proposés pour renforcer la fonction de filtrage exercée par les médecins généralistes et pour contrôler plus efficacement les décisions thérapeutiques. Enfin, les moyens d’endiguer le coût des transferts au profit des sociétés pharmaceutiques seront examinés.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by OECD Publishing in its series OECD Economics Department Working Papers with number 446.Length:
Date of creation: 29 Sep 2005
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:446-en
Contact details of provider:
Postal: 2 rue Andre Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16
Phone: 33-(0)-1-45 24 82 00
Fax: 33-(0)-1-45 24 85 00
Email:
Web page: http://www.oecd.org
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: health; OECD; Hungary; transition economies; santé; OCDE; Hongrie; économie en transition;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2005-10-15 (All new papers)
- NEP-HEA-2005-10-15 (Health Economics)
- NEP-TRA-2005-10-15 (Transition Economics)
References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:446-enFor technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

