Beyond objective metrics: A comparative analysis of health care systems incorporating subjective dimensions to improve comparability of access and equity in healthcare assessments
Sandra Jaworeck
Abstract
Comparing health care systems is important for several reasons. E.g. lower-resource health care systems can learn from higher-resource ones, and country-specific progress can be made. Previous rankings of health care systems have been based on objective factors such as the number of available hospital beds or health care spending.
Introduction
The main purpose of health care systems is to improve health with limited resources [1, 2]. Ranking health care systems accordingly is important for several reasons. First of all, to be able to compare them with each other. Comparisons strengthen better health care systems and expose weaker ones.
Materials and Methods
There are several types of validity [18]. In this case it is primarily a matter of investigating where similarities with other health care indices lie (convergent validity) and where differences emerge (discriminant validity).
Result
First, the indices are compared in terms of countries and their individual index ranking as well as associated mean index values. Fig 2 shows the differences in country ranking between the subjective and the objective index.
Discussion
It is likely that there are several latent levels behind the subjective index. One is the macro level from the GHED data set for the countries. This was combined with the ISSP 2011 country data set consisting of over 50.000 individuals who provided information on their self-rated health and confidence in their health care system.
Conclusion
This research underscores the significant divergence between subjective and objective indices in evaluating health care expenditures, highlighting the critical role of individual autonomy in financial decision-making related to healthcare.
Citation: Jaworeck S (2024) Beyond objective metrics: A comparative analysis of health care systems incorporating subjective dimensions to improve comparability of access and equity in healthcare assessments. PLoS ONE 19(6): e0304834. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304834
Editor: Guadalupe Virginia Nevárez-Moorillón, Universidad Autonoma de Chihuahua, MEXICO
Received: September 21, 2023; Accepted: May 20, 2024; Published: June 21, 2024
Copyright: © 2024 Sandra Jaworeck. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: Data: The ISSP data can be accessed on the following homepage: http://www.issp.org/data-download (accessed on 14 February 2023). The data of the GHED can be downloaded here: https://apps.who.int/nha/database/Select/Indicators/en (accessed on 14 February 2023). I am happy to provide my code for data extension to the ISSP 2011 individually. Please contact me for more information.
Funding: The publication of this article was funded by Chemnitz University of Technology.
Competing interests: Enter: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Source: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0304834#abstract0
