Health System Performance

This brief survey examines how the public views the motivations of doctors, nurses, insurance companies, and drug companies when it comes to making profits vs. working for the public good. It updates a question asked in 2005 to measure how views have changed over time.

Newly updated and expanded, the Peterson-KFF Health System Dashboard compiles data on the U.S. health system’s performance in four areas: access and affordability, health and well-being, health spending, and quality of care. Users can explore trends over time, as well as disparities and differences across demographic groups.

With so many Americans dying, and so many more suffering severe economic hardship, it’s hard to look over the horizon at the larger questions the COVID-19 crisis will bring. The current emergency requires everyone’s attention 24/7. But an emerging set of questions will fall right in the bailiwick of the health…

This post looks at potential benchmarks for estimating the number of coronavirus tests needed in the United States and compares them to current national, and state level, testing levels.

The U.S. has 2.8 hospital beds for every 1,000 people, which is similar to bed capacity in Canada and the United Kingdom, but less than other similarly wealthy countries like Italy and Spain, countries that have already been overwhelmed by the coronavirus. Learn more in this Chart of the Week.

A new analysis and chart collection finds that the U.S. has fewer hospital beds and practicing physicians per capita than many similarly large and wealthy countries with health care systems already strained by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Compared to Italy and Spain, two countries in which hospitals have already been…

More than half of U.S. health spending went toward hospital and physician services in 2018. Learn more about the breakdown of the nation’s health spending in the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker.

In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman discusses this week’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report on health spending and assesses the current effort to control health-care costs.

The Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker is an online hub monitoring how well the U.S. health system is operating through key quality and cost measures. A partnership of the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Tracker documents trends in Health Spending, Quality of Care, Access & Affordability, and Health…