Rich countries can learn from poor ones about delivering good care at low cost, conference hears

Rich countries that provide wasteful, inefficient, and inequitable health services should be more accountable for the money they spend and should adapt cost effective models of care pioneered in poor countries, delegates agreed at a meeting last week on global health. The meeting was held by the Salzburg Global Seminar (www.salzburgglobal.org) and the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science in Hanover, New Hampshire (www.dartmouth.edu/~tdc/). Al Mulley, director of the Dartmouth centre, drew attention to the low investment in research into how health services are organised and delivered and to the failure to assess rigorously whether they provide value for money in terms of outcomes that matter to patients and populations. Poor countries have had to innovate to provide essential services, and there is plenty of scope …