11.2. Health service provision

The previous section addressed three key aspects of health system performance: access to care, quality and responsiveness of care, and efficiency. This section focuses on the delivery of care, both for acute care (personal services) and preventive care (public health). Recent trends in the provision of health services include the shifting of care from inpatient to ambulatory settings, the strengthening primary care and the management of chronic diseases. There is growing attention towards preventive and health promotion programmes, although there is a wide variation across countries in the level of spending on public health and the extent to which public health programmes are based on evidence, monitored and evaluated.