Health care lessons from Sweden

Specifically, the Canadian health care system outperforms the Swedish health care system in six of measures examined: one of three cancer survival rates, two of three measures of primary care performance, and three of six meas- ures of patient safety. [...] Conversely, the Swedish health care system outperforms the Canadian health care system in nine measures: infant mortality, mortal- ity amenable to health care, all three measures of in-hospital mortality, one of three measures of primary care performance, and three of six measures of patient safety. [...] However, they can also serve as indicators of a well-functioning health care system, in particular the health care system’s capacity to prevent death at the youngest ages and the effectiveness of health care interventions during pregnancy and childbirth. [...] With this in mind, the indicators used for comparison here were selected for their ability to measure as directly as possible the performance of the health care system and for their ability to be affected as little as possible by factors external to the application of health care. [...] The final set of measures examined here in the comparison of Swedish and Canadian health care relate to patient safety when undergoing treatment in the health care system.