3. Providing health services effectively

Who has regulatory responsibility for stocking PPE in ambulatory settings, and how does it work in practice?

August 5, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) (e.g. gloves, medical masks, goggles, etc.), and large disruptions in the global marketplace made it difficult for virtually all countries to obtain PPE for their own needs in the first months of the pandemic.

May 21, 2020June 1, 2020

Providing appropriate emotional, financial and practical support to protect health workers’ mental health and wellbeing and enable them to do their job are crucial to delivering an effective COVID-19 response.

May 6, 2020May 6, 2020

Policy-makers are currently facing the challenge of striking the right balance between two competing goals: ensuring adequate capacities to treat those affected by COVID-19 and providing services that are necessary to maintain the health of the population.

April 28, 2020July 7, 2020

Digital health tools are playing a central role in responding to COVID-19; some are established tools, some are existing tools being used in new ways, and increasingly there is attention to developing specific new digital health tools to respond to the pandemic.

April 27, 2020April 27, 2020

Health care providers need flexibility to be able to respond quickly to meet increased demand in the outbreak, to offer new methods of service delivery and to maintain essential health services for non-COVID-19 conditions. The way in which providers are paid can be an obstacle to these objectives.

April 27, 2020April 27, 2020

Households increasingly face financial strain as the COVID-19 outbreak becomes an economic crisis in many countries. If people face concerns about health care affordability, they may delay seeking treatment or be prevented from obtaining the services they need, making the outbreak harder to control.

April 24, 2020April 27, 2020

Within and across European countries, there is great divergence in hospital bed and intensive care unit (ICU) capacity. To alleviate pressure on intensive-care capacity, national and regional governments and hospitals have started to help each other by transferring critically ill patients from the worst-hit regions.

April 23, 2020June 11, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed immense pressure on the health workforce across Europe and worldwide, which has been exacerbated by workforce depletion as health professionals themselves are at high risk of being infected by COVID-19.

April 21, 2020April 21, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to many countries facing shortages of sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE). The combination of increased demand for PPE and large disruptions in the global marketplace has made it difficult for virtually all countries to obtain PPE for their own needs.

3. Providing health services effectively

Cross-Country Analysis

Who has regulatory responsibility for stocking PPE in ambulatory settings, and how does it work in practice?

How are countries supporting the mental health and wellbeing of their health workforce?

How are countries reorganizing non-COVID-19 health care service delivery?

How are countries using digital health tools in responding to COVID-19?

What are countries doing to give providers flexibility to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak?

How are countries removing financial barriers to accessing health services in the context of COVID-19?

How do the worst-hit regions manage COVID-19 patients when they have no spare capacity left?

What strategies are countries using to expand health workforce surge capacity to treat COVID-19 patients?

What strategies are countries using to find new Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)?