ISSUE

: The OECD reports up to one-fifth of healthcare spending is wasted (such as through unnecessary treatments, delayed discharges or errors), making no meaningful contribution to health outcomes. If these resources could be identified, released and reallocated, greater gain could be achieved from our over-stretched health care budgets. This would allow greater improvements in health and quality of life, as well as improvements in quality of health care, without increases in expenditure.

Increased efficiency would also create headroom for innovation and high-value interventions, including from innovative medical technologies and services, which bring real value for patients.

OVERVIEW

: Short innovative case studies that cover sources of inefficiency across different health systems in Europe will be presented. Case studies will include screening, procurement and use of biosimilars, amongst others, and will demonstrate how inefficiencies can arise, explore various potential solutions and suggest the magnitude of benefit that could be achieved through reductions in inefficiency. The case studies are highly topical as policymakers are beginning to pay closer attention to the challenge of inefficiency. Implementation narratives will also be presented, through which the potential for implementation of the solutions have been explored with stakeholders across five European countries. Recommendations and next steps will be provided. The panel is designed to be beneficial to a wide variety of stakeholders by reporting on and debating multi-stakeholder issues and solutions. Indeed, all stakeholder groups will be required to work together to tackle the system-wide challenge of reducing inefficiency. The overview of the case studies and implementation narratives will be approximately 10 minutes, with 30 minutes for panellists’ perspectives and 20 minutes for audience discussion.