UK Health Accounts
Better data on health expenditure
ONS is developing Health Accounts for the UK on an experimental basis according to an internationally agreed framework of concepts, definitions, classifications and accounting rules, drawn up by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Health Accounts provide a comprehensive, coherent and consistent statistical description of health care expenditure. As such, Health Accounts permit meaningful comparisons over time as well as across countries. Many countries in the European Union as well as the OECD group of countries and more globally are taking steps to develop Health Accounts, and publically available estimates for other countries can be found on the OECD website.
ONS is keen to involve potential users in this development to maximise quality assurance as well as to familiarise users with the new data. ONS is also keen to ensure that there is a user base with known requirements and uses for this type of information. For this reason, ONS has published early estimates on an experimental basis; ONS advises users to take care when drawing conclusions from experimental estimates.
As part of this developmental work, on 27 February 2003 ONS published a first set of UK Health Accounts on an experimental basis for the financial year 1999/2000. This publication marked the end of a first stage of an iterative process, which is planned to lead to publication of figures on a National Statistics basis. Therefore, as part of current stage in developing UK Health Accounts, ONS is gauging user demand for UK Health Accounts.
All figures, along with a description of data sources and methods, are available via links on the UK Health Accounts web pages. These pages will be the main means of disseminating the results of further development work on pilot UK Health Accounts, and will be supported by occasional articles in paper media, including Economic Trends and Health Statistics Quarterly.
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Introduction to Health Accounts