The social inequalities of health have persisted, or even increased, in Europe in the last few years. This text presents the experiences of professionals from various institutional backgrounds in eight European countries, as well as their recommendations to improve the access of excluded people.

This book analyses recent reform trends of European health care systems. Using eight European countries case studies it connects policy reforms with a healthcare quadrilemma, and compares how well these systems perform in terms of economic efficiency, medical achievements, social inequalities, and responsiveness to patients and workers.

Health Politics in Europe: A Handbook is a major new reference work, which provides historical background and up-to-date information and analysis on health politics and health systems throughout Europe. In particular, it captures developments that have taken place since the end of the Cold War, a turning point for many European health systems, with most post-communist transition countries privatizing their state-run health systems, and many Western European health systems experimenting with new public management and other market-oriented health reforms. Following three introductory, stage-setting chapters, the handbook offers country cases divided into seven regional sections, each of which begins with a short regional outlook chapter that highlights the region's common characteristics and divergent paths taken by the separate countries, including comparative data on health system financing, healthcare access, and the political salience of health. Each regional section contains at least one detailed main case, followed by shorter treatments of the other countries in the region. Country chapters feature a historical overview focusing on the country's progression through a series of political regimes and the consequences of this history for the health system; an overview of the institutions and functioning of the contemporary health system; and a political narrative tracing the politics of health policy since 1989. This political narrative, the core of each country case, examines key health reforms in order to understand the political motivations and dynamics behind them and their impact on public opinion and political legitimacy. The handbook's systematic structure makes it useful for country-specific, cross-national, and topical research and analysis.

Quelles étaient les tendances observées dans les indicateurs de la santé publique au cours de ces quatre dernières années ? Quels facteurs influencent la santé et quels sont les défis pour l'avenir ? Comment les systèmes de santé peuvent-ils contribuer à l'amélioration de la santé des populations de la Région européenne de l'OMS ? En répondant à ces questions, ce rapport présente les réformes de grande ampleur entreprises par les pays afin de renforcer la performance de quatre fonctions fondamentales des systèmes de santé: la prestation de services, l'obtention de ressources, le financement et la fonction de direction (" stewardship "). Ce rapport présente des informations essentielles de santé publique afin d'aider les pays à opter pour des investissements judicieux. Il doit encourager la mise en oeuvre efficace de réformes et de politiques dans le domaine des systèmes de santé, et contribuer à l'amélioration de la performance des systèmes de santé nationaux de manière à dispenser des soins efficaces, axés sur les patients et de haute qualité. L'annexe reprend certaines des données utilisées dans l'analyse.

The European Federation for Medical Informatics has established itself as a regional body coordinating activity in medical informatics. The Congress in Toulouse, MIE-81, from 9 - 13 March 1981, is the third congress in the ser ies following MIE-78 in Cambr idge, and MIB-79 in Berlin with a gap during 1980 for the world congress MEDINFO-80 in Tokyo. The rationale behind all these congresses is the scientific need to share results and ideas and the educational need to train a wide variety of professional staff in the potential of health care and medical informatics. All the caring professions are involved, doctors, scientists, nurses, para-medical staff, administrators, health care planners, community physicians, epidemiologists, statisticians, operations analysts together with specialists from the computing profession dealing with system analysis, hardware, software, languages, data-bases and the marketing of systems. Medical Informatics is a very wide subject with ramifications throughout the health care and preventive services; it offers a key to the monitoring and improvement of patient care and to the provision of a healthier environment. The collection and evaluation of relevant data improves our understanding of the ways in which health care is provided while the availability of cheaper computer hardware and more versatile software enables us to design and implement more revealing and intelligent medical systems. Even though typical systems take a substantial amount of time to design, implement and evaluate, there is the continuing need for informaticians to assess the current state of developmen.

This profile provides a concise and policy-relevant overview of health and the health system in France as part of the broader series of the State of Health in the EU country profiles. It provides a short synthesis of: the health status in the country; the determinants of health, focussing on behavioural risk factors; the organisation of the health system; and the effectiveness, accessibility and resilience of the health system. This profile is the joint work of the OECD and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, in co-operation with the European Commission.