from the Vancouver Sun

OTTAWA – Canada’s health care system offers “excellent value for the money” says a British researcher who has studied preventable deaths in 19 industrialized nations.

The study, to be released today in Health Affairs, looks at “amenable mortality” — deaths that would not have occurred if effective health care had been available.

Conditions that caused these deaths included bacterial infections, treatable cancers, diabetes, some cardiovascular disease and the complications of common surgical procedures. The study, which looked at figures from 2002-03, updated a similar report based on 1997-98 figures. Its goal was to compare amenable deaths in the United States with 14 western European nations, plus Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

he study also tracked whether gaps in these countries had narrowed or widened. The figures were computed according to amenable deaths per 100,000 population under the age of 75.

In the first study, the researchers found that amenable deaths in the U.S. stood at 114.74 per 100,000 population, exceeded only by Ireland, Portugal, Finland and the United Kingdom.

In that time period, Canada’s amenable mortality rate was 88.77 — the seventh-lowest rate after France, Japan, Spain, Australia, Sweden and Italy. In the most recent study, Canada’s amenable death rate had dropped to 76.83, putting Canada sixth after France, Japan, Australia, Spain and Italy.  

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