INDICATORS

LITHUANIA
Data availability by Country Report: 65% of ECHI shortlist indicators are available
in international data sources. The ECHI shortlist sections for which there are most data
missing are Health Services and Health Determinants.
Data availability by ECHIM Survey: 88% of ES indicators are available at the national
level. Most of the data for the indicators are from Health Insurance Database or other
registers. Data for most Health Determinants indicators are produced by HIS. They
include both national and international surveys. Instead, there have not been national
HES but only regional (CINDI). Some of the data that are marked as available at the
moment are actually expected in near future, such as cancer screenings.
Data availability in European context: Data availability in Lithuania is better than
European average. Also data quality must be considered good, since most data come
from registers. There are no nationally representative HES data available, but the
situation is quite similar in most European countries.
Overall situation of data sources: The Lithuanian Health Information Centre (LSIC;
www.lsic.lt) is responsible for general health monitoring; it is specialised in administrative
data, health services and morbidity data. Statistics Lithuania (www.stat.gov.lt) performs
HIS. Other organisations gathering health data include Cancer Register, AIDS
Centre, State Mental Health Centre, State Environmental Health Centre, Centre of
Communicable Diseases and Kaunas University of Medicine. Data sources are fairly
complete; only data for use of prescription medicines are incomplete. Data for only
reimbursed medicines are available. At the moment record linkage is not possible because
of strict data protection legislation. Work is being done to make linkage possible in the
near future, but the outcome is uncertain.
Health reporting: LSIC publishes the extensive Health Statistics of Lithuania annually.
Also topic specific report of newborn information system as well as reviews of health
behaviour and environmental health are published online. Health in the Baltic
Countries is a Baltic joint issue with the Ministry of Social Affairs of Estonia and the
Health Statistics and Medical Technologies State Agency of Latvia. LSIC also hosts
a database containing data for several dozens of selected health indicators with time
series and breakdowns. The database shares the technique with that of WHO Health for
All. Statistics Lithuania also publishes some health data online, mainly health care and
demographic data. Data are presented both by predefined tables and a database, and a
link to Eurostat database is well visible. Most of the reports and other publications of
both organisations are available also in English.
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