A PBS/Frontline documentary on Healthcare quality around the world?

Link: Frontline/PBS: Sick around the world.

Recently I had the opportunity to watch an interview on CSPAN with T.R. Reid, author of The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, where he described his participation in a documentary produced by Frontline & PBS called "Sick around the world."

Some of the issues presented in the documentary are analogous to the problems we face today with Health Reform. T.R. Reid visited Great Britain, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland where he spoke with health care professionals and politicians about the availability, costs, and quality of health care in these nations, and the interests of their people, drug companies, and insurers, with additional information on the government's role in health reform.

The documentary reports that in most cases, the quality of health care is as good or better than what we have in our country, and costs (as a measure of GDP), are significantly less than the U.S. Before watching these videos, I thought that although health care delivery systems exist elsewhere, the waiting time for treatment was excessively long, however the documentary shows that this belief is without merit.

I found these videos thought provoking. It is interesting to consider what has been done elsewhere, to learn from their mistakes, and to use the information to improve our national interests in health care reform - taking politics out of the equation. Health Reform is a "wicked problem" and I think most people agree that we need to do something. As a Registered Nurse, I have a high level of interest in learning new ways to improve the health of our population.

Can the U.S. learn anything from the rest of the world about how to run a health care system?

Great Britain: A Leader in Preventive Medicine

Japan:Universal Coverage, No Gatekeepers

Germany: A Popular, Largely Market-Based System

Taiwan: A New System They Copied From Others

Switzerland: Its Former System Resembled Ours

Comments

[International Health Insurance]

Just think if everyone had an EMR in the world If everyone would have a flash drive around their neck or on their person likes an electronic dog tag. You would not need the Internet. All you would need to do is plug the flash drive into the USB port and a pre-set form would come up with all the pertinent info. All the info needed to treat a patient. Like medical history, allergies and medications. We would save so much money, because of the time saving element. No need to run so many tests. And of course a lot less medical mistakes because they would have a great base to work from with each patient.