This chart collection compares health outcomes, quality of care, and access to services between the U.S. and peer countries. While inconsistent and imperfect metrics make it difficult to firmly assess system-wide health quality, measures of long-term health outcomes, treatment outcomes, patient safety, and patient experiences suggest the U.S. health system provides lower-quality care than its peers. .
The U.S. performs worse in long-term health outcomes measures (such as life expectancy), certain treatment outcomes (such as maternal mortality and congestive heart failure hospital admissions), some patient safety measures (such as obstetric trauma with instrument and medication or treatment errors), and patient experiences of not getting care due to cost. The U.S. performs similarly to or better than peer nations in other measures of treatment outcomes (such as mortality rates within 30 days of acute hospital treatment) and patient safety (such as rates of post–operative sepsis).
The chart collection is part of the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, an online information hub dedicated to monitoring and assessing the performance of the U.S. health system.
