A Euro Health Consumer Index (EHCI) research ranked Croatia 16th out of 35 countries, with respect to the quality and availability of health care.
The Euro Health Consumer Index (EHCI) measures the quality of a country’s health care system, primarily from the perspective of the service’s beneficiary, using 6 sub-disciplines divided into as many as 48 indicators. The maximum number of points that can be awarded is 1000.
The 10 top-ranked healthcare systems under the EHCI 2015 are those of the rich Western European and Scandinavian countries, while, from the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, the systems of the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Croatia, which ranks 16th with a total of 707 points, stand out .
Since wealth, financial investments in health care and purchasing power are very differently distributed amongst the 35 countries considered, there was an attempt to account mathematically for these differences and balance them out. This resulted in an indicator known as Bang-for-the-Buck (which roughly means “how much the health care system offers for the money invested”). According to this parameter, the Croatian health care system is ranked very high, sharing 3rd place with the Czech Republic.
The parameters for which we were awarded the lowest number of points concern prevention. With respect to this, the prevention of chronic non-communicable diseases, specifically, the prevention of high blood pressure and its consequences, as well as the prevention of smoking, are of especially poor quality, whereas the promotion of physical activity is insufficient. It is necessary to raise awareness of preventive diagnostics as a measure which saves lives.
