INDICATORS

ANNEX 4
ANNEX 4: Country Specific Section
In this annex the information derived from the Country Reports, the ECHIM Survey
and the Bilateral Discussions is compiled by country, in order to create a general view
of the participating countries, as separate entities as well as in European context. The
health indicator data availability is reviewed, as well as the main data sources and health
reporting. The main emphasis is, however, on the prerequisites and possibilities to
implement the ECHI indicator system in the countries.
The structure of the Country Specific Section is standardised for all countries. It consists
of not more than two pages of text and the so-called Info Box by which the main points
of the information are visualised. The countries are assorted in alphabetical order. In
this introduction the structure is looked through, and the frequently used abbreviations
are explained.
The Country Specific Sections (abbreviation: CSS) start with the indicator data
availability figures according to both the Country Report (CR) and the ECHIM Survey
(ES). The figures are not outright comparable, because the indicators in the CR and the
ES were not totally correspondent. For the CR, the availability figure is the percentage
of the ECHI shortlist indicators for which there are data available in the international
data sources, most notably Eurostat, WHO Health for All database and OECD Health
Data. The fact that for many ECHI indicators there are no datasets in those databases
has been taken into account by counting these indicators out of the total number of
indicators that is used as denominator. Thus, as 17 of the 82 ECHI shortlist indicators
(before July 2008) are missing in the data sources, the denominator and theoretic 100%
score is 65. The average score of 32 countries is 68%, the highest being 86% and the
lowest 35%. The score is clarified by referring to the indicator groups of particularly
high or low availability figure.
The data availability figures of the ES are based on the individual 52 indicators reviewed
in the ES. They differ from the ECHI shortlist indicators so that the generally best
available indicators, i.e. all demographic and socio-economic factors and many health
services indicators were left out. Instead, some important health examination survey
indicators were included, although they were not on the current ECHI shortlist. The
European average score is 77%, ranging from 58% to 100%. The most important
factors of the score are explained similarly as in the case of the CR, and in some cases
some important data sources are also mentioned, particularly health interview surveys
(abbreviation: HIS), health examination surveys (HES) and registers.
The differences in data availability between the CR and the ES are not completely
comparable, but by observing the availability scores some remarkable findings can be
made in many cases. The most frequent observation is that often the ES availability
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