(Withdrawn) Effectiveness of health care system in countries in transition

Ivana Kulhanova, Charles University in Prague

The study is focused on the analysis of impact of medical treatment and health care system in the selected Central and Eastern European countries. Those countries experienced for several decades the same political regime that led to the deterioration of death rates. Since the collapse of the communism, the mortality has improved rapidly. While the post-communist countries were homogenous in terms of mortality behaviour, they started to diverge after the fall of communist regime. Although the mortality has improved, social inequalities remain in population. It might be that the socio-economic factors or diverse health policy and health care system lead to the divergence between countries. The aim of the study is to investigate the connection between health care system and health outcome in the region of Eastern Europe. In addition, the concept of avoidable mortality was applied as a methodological instrument for measuring the effectiveness of the health care system in order to reduce intensity of mortality in population. Using the method of decomposition of the life expectancy, contributions of each category of avoidable causes of death were examined. The results of time analysis demonstrate that improvements in health care and prevention, and changes in lifestyle significantly contributed to the increase in the life expectancy. On the contrary, impact of the health care system was not found in the study of differences in mortality between countries. Furthermore, the health care reforms in 1990s should be investigated to identify the impact of economic transition on the health outcome.