Controlling Costs Across International Health Systems
<p>The Commonwealth Fund's 14th annual International Symposium on Health Care Policy, held last month, brought together health ministers and leading policy thinkers from across the industrialized world to explore ways of achieving a sustainable high-performing health care system. </p>
<p>In a <a href="/blog/2011/controlling-costs-across-health-systems-commonwealth-fund-2011-international-symposium">new blog post</a>, Robin Osborn, M.B.A., vice president and director of The Commonwealth Fund's International Program in Health Policy and Innovation, reports on the symposium, where participants from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States examined approaches to such shared challenges as measuring and benchmarking outcomes and redesigning health care systems around the needs and preferences of patients. Government ministers offered their views on the Fund’s 2011 International Health Policy Survey and discussed key initiatives in their home countries, including general practitioner-led clinical commissioning groups in England, health homes in France, care coordination legislation in Norway, and patient-controlled electronic health records in Australia. </p>
<p>Visit <a href="~/link.aspx?_id=0B67ACA7A5CB453CB876F3DB59E19448&_z=z">The Commonwealth Fund Blog</a> to learn more about the event, including guest presentations by Devi Prasad Shetty, M.D., a cardiac surgeon and chair of Narayana Hrudayalaya Heart Hospital in Bangalore, India, and Naoki Ikegami, M.D., Ph.D., a health economist from Keio University in Japan. Also available are videos of keynote speakers <a href="/publications/video/2011/dec/driving-health-system-transformation-insights-and-inspiration">David Blumenthal, M.D.,</a> chair of The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, and <a href="/publications/video/2011/dec/realizing-promise-health-reform-health-care-system-21st-century">Annette Widmann-Mauz</a>, Parliamentary State Secretary for Health for Germany. <br /></p>