There are different answers to the question of what makes a healthcare system good. It likely depends upon one’s point of view. However, the World Health Organization (WHO), one of the major organizations in the world has established a well-accepted list of six major areas, so let’s begin here.
U. S. Health Care System
All health care systems have six major building blocks or components that ideally function as described by the WHO (2007):
- Good health services are those that deliver effective, safe, quality personal and non-personal health interventions to those who need them, when and where needed, with minimum waste of resources.
- A well-performing health workforce is one that works in ways that are responsive, fair, and efficient to achieve the best health outcomes possible, give, available resources and circumstances, (i.e., there are sufficient staff, fairly distributed: they are competent, responsive, and productive).
- A well-functioning health system ensures equitable access to essential medical products, vaccines, and technologies of assured quality, safety, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness, and their scientifically sound and cost-effective use.
- Leadership and governance involve ensuring strategic policy frameworks exist and are combined with effectiv3e oversight, coalition-building, regulation, attention to system design, and accountability.
- A good healthy financing system raised adequate funds for health in ways that ensure people can use needed services and are p protected from financial catastrophe or impoverishment associated with having to pay for them. It provides incentives for provers and users to be efficient.
- A well-functioning health information system is one that ensures the production, analysis, dissemination, and use of reliable and timely information on health determinants, health system performance, and health status.
