Browse by: "2015"

This report reviews the quality of health care in Italy, seeks to highlight best practices, and provides a series of targeted assessments and recommendations for further improvements to quality of care. Italy’s indicators of health system outcomes, quality and efficiency are uniformly impressive. Life expectancy is the fifth highest in the OECD. Avoidable admission rates are amongst the very best in the OECD, and case-fatality after stroke or heart attack are also well below OECD averages. These figures, however, mask profound regional differences. Five times as many children in Sicily are admitted to hospital with an asthma attack than in Tuscany, for example. Despite this, quality improvement and service redesign have taken a back-seat as the fiscal crisis has hit. Fiscal consolidation has become an over-riding priority, even as health needs rapidly evolve. Italy must urgently prioritise quality of its health care services alongside fiscal sustainability. Regional differences must be lessened, in part by giving central authorities a greater role in supporting regional monitoring of local performance. Proactive, coordinated care for people with complex needs must be delivered by a strengthened primary care sector. Fundamental to each of these steps will be ensuring that the knowledge and skills of the health care workforce are best matched to needs.

This periodic review (roughly every five years) of the individual development co-operation efforts of Austria assesses the performance of Austria's programme, not just that of its development co-operation agency, and examines both policy and implementation. It takes an integrated, system-wide perspective.

This report presents the findings and recommendations from analysis conducted by the OECD as part of the OECD-Hungary Strategic Partnership for Public Administration Reform. Through this initiative, the OECD has supported the government of Hungary in putting in place some of the key building blocks of a “strategic state”. The report’s recommendations can be expected to contribute to strengthening the efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and integrity of the public administration and contribute to supporting sustainable and inclusive growth and development in Hungary.

Building on an initial assessment of constraints to development in Myanmar (Volume 1), this second volume provides analysis and policy recommendations in three key areas: structural transformation, education and skills, and financing development. It finds that Myanmar faces a crucial few years to shape growth towards a higher, more sustainable and equitable trajectory. To succeed, it will require a transformation of the economy from an agrarian base reliant on small-scale agriculture at present towards a broad range of modern activities. Building up the right skills in the workforce will be essential to support this structural transformation. Myanmar’s transformation will also depend upon how effectively the country can mobilise and allocate the financial resources needed to support its development, which could amount to as much as an additional 5-10% of GDP on average over the next two decades.

OECD's 2015 Economic Survey of Mexico examines recent economic developments, prospects and policies. Special chapters boosting growth and reducing informality as well as sharing the fruits of growth.

El 2015 Estudio Económico de la OCDE de México examina los últimos económicos desarrollos, perspectivas y políticas. Capítulos especiales impulsar el crecimiento y la productividad y compartiendo los frutos del crecimiento.

In parallel to a sweeping structural reform agenda, Mexico announced in 2013 a new approach to housing and urban policy. Calling for a more explicit qualitative focus on housing and the urban environment, the policy shift is a welcome development. Mexico urbanised more rapidly than most OECD countries in the past half-century, in part as a result of the expansion of housing finance led by INFONAVIT and facilitated by policies aiming to expand access to formal housing. Yet the quantitative push for formal housing came with quantitative costs: inefficient development patterns resulting in a hollowing out of city centres and the third-highest rate of urban sprawl in the OECD; increasing motorisation rates; a significant share of vacant housing, with one-seventh of the housing stock uninhabited in 2010; housing developments with inadequate access to public transport and basic urban services; and social segregation. How can the Mexican authorities “get cities right” and develop more competitive, sustainable and inclusive cities? How can they improve the capacity of the relevant institutions and foster greater collaboration among them? How can INFONAVIT ensure that its lending activities generate more sustainable urban outcomes as it also fulfils its pension mandate and help Mexicans save more for retirement?

The peer review process can lead to changes in the interpretation of the slides and the reported results, and potentially the outcome and conclusions of the study. The purpose of this document is to provide guidance to pathologists, test facility management, study directors and quality assurance personnel on how the peer review of histopathology should be planned, managed, documented and reported in order to meet GLP expectations and requirements. This document is a complement to the guidance provided in section 3.6.3.7 of OECD Guidance Document 116 (series on testing and assessment), whose focus is on how histopathology peer review should be conducted.