Federal Public Service Social Security

Directorate General Social policy

Dept. International relations

Kruidtuinlaan 50

1000 BRUSSELS

Belgium

Health care expenditure quantifies the economic resources dedicated to health functions, excluding capital investment. Healthcare expenditure concerns itself primarily with healthcare goods and services that are consumed by resident units, irrespective of where that consumption takes place (it may be in the rest of the world) or who is paying for it. As such, exports of healthcare goods and services (to non-resident units) are excluded, whereas imports of healthcare goods and services for final use are included.
Health care expenditure data provide information on expenditure in the functionally defined area of health distinct by provider category (e.g. hospitals, general practitioners), function category (e.g. services of curative care, rehabilitative care, clinical laboratory, patient transport, prescribed medicines) and financing scheme (e.g. social security, private insurance company, household). For the collection of the data on health care expenditure the System of Health Accounts (SHA) and its related set of International Classification for the Health Accounts (ICHA) is used. SHA sets out an integrated system of comprehensive and internationally comparable accounts and provides a uniform framework of basic accounting rules and a set of standard tables for reporting health expenditure data. The System of Health Accounts - SHA 2011 is a statistical reference manual giving a comprehensive description of the financial flows in health care. It provides a set of revised classifications of health care functions, providers of health care goods and services and financing schemes. The SHA is currently used as a basis for a joint data collection by OECD, Eurostat and WHO on health care expenditure. The manual sets out in more detail the boundaries, the definitions and the concepts of health accounting – responding to health care systems around the globe with very different organisational and financing arrangements.

Accounting period: Health expenditure and financing data pertain to the calendar year (1 January to 31 December).

The time coverage of this Quality report is 2014 to 2016 reference years.

Healthcare expenditure is recorded in relation to the international classification for health accounts (ICHA) defining:

• healthcare expenditure by financing schemes (ICHA-HF) — which classifies the types of financing arrangements through which people obtain health services; health care financing schemes include direct payments by households for services and goods and third-party financing arrangements;
• healthcare expenditure by function (ICHA-HC) — which details the split in healthcare expenditure following the purpose of healthcare activities — such as, curative care, rehabilitative care, long-term care, or preventive care;
• healthcare expenditure by provider (ICHA-HP) — which classifies units contributing to the provision of healthcare goods and services — such as hospitals, residential facilities, ambulatory health care services, ancillary services or retailers of medical goods.

1. Household individual consumption on health, including the collective consumption with two exceptions:
i. Occupational health care (intermediate consumption within establishments) minus an estimated share of occupational health in health providers’ and other medical industries net administration;
ii.“Remunerated” unpaid household production in the form of transfer payments (social benefits in cash) for home care of sick, disabled and elderly persons provided by family members.

SHA 2011 Manual recommends following the standard System of National Account (SNA) rules for drawing the production boundary of health care services, albeit with two notable exceptions:
- Occupational health care is included in the national totals of health care spending. In SNA, this item is recorded as ancillary services and part of intermediate production of enterprises,
- Part of the cash transfers to private households for care givers of home care for the sick and disabled are treated as the paid household production of health care.

2. Health care financing schemes:

HF1 Government schemes and compulsory contributory health care financing schemes;

HF2 -voluntary health care payment schemes;
HF3 - Household out-of-pocket payment;

HF4 - rest of the world financing schemes, albeit that this is not applicable to Belgium.

3. NACE rev. 2, section Q, human health and social work activities.

SHA concept is the consumption of health care goods and services.
Health care statistics describe the process of providing and financing health care in countries by referring to health care goods and services, its providers and financing. For the collection of the data on health care expenditure the System of Health Accounts (SHA) and its related set of International Classification for the Health Accounts (ICHA) is used. SHA is a tri-axial system in which the financing, provision and consumption dimensions are covered by the ICHA (International Classification for Health Accounts): Health Care Functions (HC), Health Care Providers (HP), Health Care Financing Schemes (HF).
Data are presented in 3 summary (one-dimensional) tables and 3 cross-classification tables (2-dimensional tables).

Summary tables provide data on:

• Current expenditure by provider (ICHA-HP)
• Current expenditure by function (ICHA-HC)
• Current expenditure by financing scheme (ICHA-HF)

Cross-classification tables refer to:

• HC x HP: Health care expenditure by function and provider: data on which type of health care goods and services are supplied by which health care provider;
• HC x HF: Health care expenditure by function and by financing scheme: data on how are the different types of services and goods financed;
• HP x HF: Health care expenditure by provider and by financing scheme: data on from which health care provider and under which particular financing scheme are the services and goods purchased.

Commission Regulation 2015/359 concerns the collection of data on "current expenditure on healthcare" which is defined as the "final consumption expenditure of resident units on health care goods and services".
There is a very close relationship between the concept of "final consumption expenditure" as defined in the System of Health Accounts (SHA) and in National Account and, as a consequence, also between the underlying economic transactions as recorded in the two accounting frameworks.
In National Accounts there are two types of statistical units: institutional units and local kind-of-activity units (KAU). A local KAU groups all the parts of an institutional unit in its capacity as producer which are located in a single site. A local KAU belongs to one and only one institutional unit.
SHA uses the same two types of units for data compilation.
Local KAUs operating as providers of healthcare goods and services to resident units are statistical units in SHA.
Also transactions by institutional units are recorded in SHA, in which framework institutional units are also referred to as "financing agents". More precisely, SHA financing agents are institutional units that manage one or more financing schemes. The transactions are executed by the financing agents, according to the rules of the financing schemes.
Financing agents serve as key statistical units in producing national health accounts. While financing schemes are the key units for analysing how the consumption of health care goods and services is financed, the data concerning the relevant transactions are collected either from the financing agents that operate the different financing schemes or from the providers.
The concept of "healthcare financing schemes" in SHA is an application and extension of the concept of "social protection schemes" defined by the European System of Social PROtection Statistics (ESSPROS):  "a distinct body of rules, supported by one or more institutional units, governing the provision of social protection benefits and their financing ...". The social protection scheme is the statistical unit in ESSPROS. It is an analytical unit that allows describing the complete structure of the social protection financing system:  expenditure and receipts.
According to SHA Manual 2011, "the key concepts for describing the structure of the health care financing system are based on measuring: (a) the expenditure of health care financing schemes, under which goods and services are purchased directly from health care providers, on the one hand, and (b) the types of revenues of health care financing schemes, on the other hand.  
Commission Regulation 2015/359 limits its scope to the collection of data on the expenditure of health care financing schemes.

SHA focuses on the consumption of health care goods and services by the resident population irrespective of where this takes place. This implies the inclusion of imports (from non-resident providers) and the exclusion of exports (health care goods and services provided to non-residents).

The data aims at providing a complete overview of expenditure on health care goods and services consumption of services and goods by the resident population on the national territory of a country.

Data are available for the period 2003-2016.

Not applicable. 

Several data sources are used:

-          Surveys/census: 2

-          Financial reports: 4

-          Other: 2

Surveys/censuses

Financial reports

Other

Annual.

Data are collected through the joint health accounts questionnaire (JHAQ) that countries submit to Eurostat during the annual data collection exercise. There is a voluntary deadline to send the JHAQ questionnaire for the calendar year T by the 31st of March T+2. The joint health accounts questionnaire (JHAQ) is coordinated in agreement with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). These three international organisations are known collectively as the International Health Accounts Team (IHAT). Countries submit data to Eurostat on the basis of Commission Regulation (EU) 2015/359 of 4 March 2015 implementing Regulation (EC) No 1338/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards statistics on healthcare expenditure and financing.

Data for Belgium are gathered by the Federal Public Service Social Security and treated to compile SHA accounts and cover the financing schemes of health care consumption.  Social security data serve as a base to calculate keys.  Double countings are eliminated from the calculations. Estimates of non-health consumption occurring by some providers are also eliminated.  Estimates of health related consumption of retail sales (glasses and hearing aids) are added.

The 2018 JHAQ includes a number of features which allow national data correspondents to perform various quality checks before submitting the data. The embedded programmes allow the verification of:

1- Consistency of the data between tables,
This step checks if the marginal totals reported in each table of the JHAQ are consistent across all tables. For example, for each function (HC), the total across all financing schemes (HF) in the HCxHF table has to be equal to the total across all providers (HP) in the HCxHP table, i.e. the values in the column “All HF” in the HCxHF table have to be equal to the values in the column “All HP” in the HCxHP table. Any detected differences are flagged up in the corresponding row or column in the relevant tables and all inconsistencies are listed in the “Report” worksheet by variable code together with the amount by which the respective variable differs between the two compared tables. A positive value indicates that the first listed table has a higher value for the same variable, and vice versa.

2- Consistency of the data within tables,
Any detected inconsistencies are listed by variable code together with an indication of which total is not equal to the sum of its subcomponents as well as the numerical difference. A positive figure indicates that the total is greater than the reported sub-components, and vice versa.

• The presence of negative values,

Entries in the tables cannot be negative as they refer to the consumption of goods and services.
If an individual data table is checked for internal consistency, the negative values check is performed for the relevant table and then any negative values are highlighted red and crossed out.

• The presence of atypical entries,

The atypical entries check provides information whether the data tables contain values in cells which are – if at all – only reported by very few countries and are thus atypical for health accounting.
If an individual data table is checked for internal consistency, the atypical entries check is performed for the relevant table. In the data tables, any cell containing an atypical entry will be highlighted for national data providers.
Should any atypical entries be identified, compilers should scrutinize in detail the transactions that led to entries in those cells and assess whether the accounting rules of SHA have been correctly applied. If they come to the conclusion that the transactions are recorded in the correct categories of the ICHA classifications, then the corresponding atypical entries represent unique – and correctly accounted for – features of the country’s health system. In this case a short description of the nature of the transactions should be included in the accompanying Metadata file under “II.3. Atypical entries”.
If, on the other hand, compilers come to the conclusion that the transactions are not recorded correctly, then they need to make adjustments in the concerned tables. In case the transactions recorded in a cell do not belong to the boundaries of SHA (e.g. they refer to intermediate consumption) the value of the respective cell should be deleted (and all cells that are affected by this change adjusted accordingly). In case the transactions are misreported and another category of the ICHA classification is more appropriate, the value of the cell should be transferred to the correct cell of the table.

3- The growth rates against the previous year and the magnitude of revisions as compared to previously submitted data. Results are grouped into three different categories:

• Breaks in series (the current questionnaire shows no data for an item that is not null in the other file)
• Newly reported (the current questionnaire contains data for an item that is empty in the other file)
• Differences (all other types of differences)

The Belgian social security health insurance functions on a fee-for-service basis, disposing of exhaustive information on several thousand of medical acts and services performed by the providers.

This information is aggregated into some 1500 types of benefits, that get individually classifications assigned (provider and function).  This data source also identifies the patient copayment amounts for all these (reimbursable) benefits.

This information is used as a basis for the calculation of different keys, used for assigning financial interventions of other schemes for whom such detailed information is not available:

- third party intervention in copayments by private insurance companies and other complementary insurances

- distribution of out-of-pocket payments per item

- reimbursement of medical care by occupational hazards social security.

Governmental accounts data and budget are used on a individual expense item basis.  All expenditure items covering health and long term care are assigned a classification of provider and function.  This includes also items not belonging to COFOG 7.  Data are included for medical services provided by health services of the defense forces and justice department to prisoners, as well as data for general population protection (ministry of the interior)  Data cover federal and all regional governments in Belgium.

Estimates of final household consumption per item are used and corrected for government interventions (care allowances, reimbursements by complementary insurances, non-health consumption) and then submitted to a calculated key per item for 2nd or 3rd digit assignment of function/provider.

Not applicable.

Authorities responsible for SHA data collection are working to ensure that the statistical practices used to compile national health accounts are in compliance with SHA methodological requirements and that good practices in the field are being followed, according to the methodology underlined in the SHA 2011 Manual and European Statistics Code of Practice respecting professional independence of the statistical authorities. Procedures are in place to plan and monitor the quality of the health care expenditure statistical production process.

Even if data are compiled starting from very detailed administrative data on the reimbursement of health care, the patients co-payments are calculated using keys that may not perfectly reflect the private consumption patterns, on the 2nd and 3rd digit levels.

Government accounts and budget data are used and classified using the budgetary article label.  This may lead to overestimation of some items and subreporting of others, which cannot be corrected in the actual state of play of information available.  Nevertheless, these errors are negligible in view of the general expenditure amounts.

Prior to 2006, data sources were less detailed.  The classification of expenditure is therefore not entirely comparable with the data starting from 2006, causing a break in series.

Policy development use in Belgium is still very limited.

Not tested.

Data are available on the requested detail requested by Eurostat for all items applicable or relevant in the situation of health and long term care delivery and consumption in Belgium.

(Commission Regulation (EU) 2015/359 of 4 March 2015 implementing Regulation (EC) No 1338/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards statistics on healthcare expenditure and financing)

Data are available on the requested detail requested by Eurostat for all items applicable or relevant in the situation of health and long term care delivery and consumption in Belgium.

(Commission Regulation (EU) 2015/359 of 4 March 2015 implementing Regulation (EC) No 1338/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards statistics on healthcare expenditure and financing)

No statistical estimation technique is used.

Out of pocket expenditure is subject at the basis to the error levels generated in the estimation of final household consumption in the framework of the national accounts.

Where a repartition key is used, based on administrative accounts to split some expenditure items this could lead to some 'incorrectness' on 2nd or 3rd digit level.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

See 6.3.2.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Methodological improvements applied for total time span (2003 to last year), punctual data corrections due to new/better/updated data sources for those years where needed.

H321: elimination for entire time span (2003-2015) of a double counting between HF31 and HF11 : specific allocations not deducted before from household consumption. As these items are treated as 'transfers to households' by national accounts, they are not taken into account on the expenditure side of households (deducted), but by mistake also not deducted by us, so that double counting existed.

Depends on the nature of corrections needed.

Member States are required to transmit their data to Eurostat in compliance with the Commission Regulation 359/2015 transmission deadlines.
Data and reference metadata for the reference year T should be transmitted to Eurostat by 30 April T+2.

30 April T+2.

30 April T+2.

Data delivered following deadlines.

Deadlines respected.

Not applicable at national level.  Data cover the country.

Not applicable.

Breaks in time series resulting from methodological changes

Except for the consequences of the series breaks, all data items are fully comparable and consistent over the 2003-2016 period on all levels.

Not applicable: SHA is an estimation of final consumption expenditure.

With regards to national accounts, sectoral subdivisions differ.  (SHA public expenditure is larger than COFOG7 - complementary insurance interventions are lifted out of the financial sector)

In SHA, corrections are applied for non-health services consumed in the hospital sector.

Not applicable.

Coherence in accounting principles exist.

However, as scope differences exist between national accounts in the health classification in COFOG, COICOP, etc.. a full coherence in 'scope' is as such not applicable.

Differences with national accounts will be found in:

- governement 'health' expenditure (larger than COFOG 7)

- private insurance expenditure

- corrections of final household consumption for non-health services in hospitals and pharmacies, addition of health related items from retail sale in national accounts.

Defined by Eurostat.

Defined by Eurostat.

National data can be accessed here:

https://socialsecurity.belgium.be/nl/cijfers-van-sociale-bescherming/statistieken-sociale-bescherming/gezondheidsrekeningen

https://socialsecurity.belgium.be/fr/chiffres-de-la-protection-sociale/statistiques-de-la-protection-sociale/comptes-de-la-sante

Not available.

Not applicable.

Defined by Eurostat.

A full methodological manual on national level is under development.

Not applicable.

100%

Not applicable.

Cost of production is estimated on 2FTE and 300.000 EUR/year

This does not include production of the source data (accounts, reports) by data providers.

The Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recitals 23-27, 31-32 and Articles 20-26) applies.

Not applicable.

If data are internally coherent, consistent and calculated on known basis, this is not a guarantee for international comparability (where, as known, issues still exist).