A recent Boston-based Bain & Co. report found Europe's healthcare system is beginning to parallel that of the U.S. healthcare system, despite previous notions that the regions' markets drastically differed, according to Yahoo! Finance.
Here are five takeaways:
1. In both regions, more than half of physicians feel they have an important role in controlling costs. However, differences do remain, with U.S. physicians taking on a more direct role in managing costs. For example, 80 percent of surveyed U.S. physicians said they feel responsible to control costs, compared to 44 percent of German physicians.
2. Among U.K., German, France and Italian physicians, the number of surgeons saying their procurement departments played a major role in the decision-making process for buying tools and devices has rallied to 35 percent last year, up from 23 percent in 2013. A 2015 Bain study found more than 50 percent of surveyed U.S. physicians reported procurement led their organization's purchasing decisions, with the figure up from 29 percent in 2013.
3. The U.S. healthcare system is more systemized than Europe's, but Europe's healthcare system is starting to consolidate. The United Kingdom is similar to the United States regarding systemization due to its single public payer and provider healthcare system. However, Germany and France fail to keep pace as their health systems are less centralized and provide their physicians more freedom on patient care decisions.
4. As Europe and the United States continue to trend toward systemized care, the report authors project that pharmaceutical and medical device companies will see many similarities between these two regions. New stakeholders and procurement officers will have more control over medical device vendors and prescribing decisions and companies will have increasing pressure to prove products' incremental value.
5. The study authors argue European physicians may look to U.S. physicians' successes to see what the future healthcare system will entail for systemization and physician engagement. Tim van Biesen, partner at Bain & Co. said, "Success in healthcare — whether it's in the United States or Europe — requires a deep understanding of the competitive landscape and the ability to adapt to the different ways that physicians and procurement officers are now addressing purchasing decisions."