This report compares health system performance in 10 countries, including Australia, to glean insights for U.S. improvement.  Australia featured in the top three countries with the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Analysis was conducted of 70 health system performance measures across five areas:

1. Access to care
2. Care process
3. Administrative efficiency
4. Equity
5. Health outcomes.

Differences in overall performance between most countries were relatively small. The only clear outlier was the U.S., where health system performance is dramatically lower. The U.S. continues to be in a class by itself in the underperformance of its health care sector. While the other nine countries differ in the details of their systems and in their performance on domains, unlike the U.S., they all have found a way to meet their residents’ most basic health care needs, including universal coverage.

Australia – the top performer overall – faired quite poorly when it came to access to care. Roughly half of Australian patients who do not choose to purchase voluntary health insurance may have to wait longer to receive services. Affordability is also a noted problem, although new billing incentives have led to improvement in recent years. Australia and the U.K. excelled in administrative efficiency by minimizing payment and billing burdens.