Ireland ranks poorly for patient power

THE patient is not at the centre of Ireland’s healthcare system, an international survey has found, and patients here are among the least empowered in Europe.

Denmark tops the list giving patients power over their information and rights that allows them make active choices in their care.

The report places Ireland in 20th place in the 31 countries surveyed by the Health Consumer Powerhouse, a Brussels-based company that evaluates health systems throughout Europe. Its advice for Ireland is to provide consumers with a catalogue giving quality rankings for hospitals and health care professionals to help patients make a choice. The report says that money is not the only thing that matters when it comes to patient empowerment.

The top ranking countries are a mixture of western, central and eastern European countries including Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Netherlands, Hungary and Slovenia.

The report said: “In the top-ranked countries policy makers seem to realise that the healthcare system is for the patients and does not only serve to guarantee a healthy workforce able to pay taxes and do its duty.”

Middle-ranking countries including Austria, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, Belgium and Sweden need to provide financial incentives like co-payment and free choice of doctors and hospitals together with a catalogue with quality ranking, the report says.

In the final, failing, ranking comes Ireland together with Britain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Poland, Latvia, Romania and Bulgaria (last position) and a number of other countries.

The advice to all these countries is that better information is the first step towards patient empowerment and this means fostering patient literacy.