Malta has dropped four places in the Euro Health Consumer Index, an annual ranking of the performance of different countries’ health systems.
The country fell to 27th place out of 35 countries in 2018, having been ranked at 23rd the previous year, following a marginal decline from 642 to 631 points, compared to a maximum of 1,000.
The index, published Monday by Swedish policy think-tank Health Consumer Powerhouse, measures the performance of national healthcare systems by assessing patient rights and information, accessibility, treatment outcomes, range and reach of services, prevention and pharmaceutical use.
Malta’s assessment remained unchanged from the previous year’s report, with the authors citing decent accessibility, but less strong treatment results.
“There seem to be gaps in the public subsidy system of Maltese healthcare," the report states. “This is particularly prominent for drug subsidies; many Maltese do not bother with receiving a subsidy. The result is that Malta has little data on drug use.”
Lost points in two categories
Between 2017 and 2018, Malta lost points in two of the six assessment categories, namely treatment outcomes and pharmaceutical use.
The drop may have been affected by the tightening of scoring criteria and the replacement of two previous indicators with two new ones, access to psychiatric care for children and suicide reduction, the latter of which Malta scored poorly in.
There seem to be gaps in the public subsidy system of Maltese healthcare
A think-tank representative had not replied to questions at the time of writing.
The report also notes, as in previous years, that Malta remained one of four European countries where abortion rights did not exist, which earned the country a zero point marker “for particularly abominable results” on that indicator.
“Legal bans do not prevent abortions but rather turns them into a major health risk, forcing women to go abroad or having an abortion under obscure, insecure conditions,” the report states. “The latter affects almost solely women in socio-economically deprived circumstances.”
Overall, the report found that European healthcare was steadily improving, with infant mortality and survival rates of heart disease, stroke and cancer all moving in the right direction.
Patient choice and involvement were also found to be developing, but many countries were deemed to be sticking to inefficient ways of funding and delivering care services.
Switzerland was ranked top, dethroning the Netherlands for the first time in 10 years and scoring 893 points overall.
“Switzerland has for a long time had a reputation for having an excellent, although expensive, healthcare system, and it therefore comes as no surprise that rewarding clinical excellence results in a prominent position in the EHCI,” the report noted.