by Nathalie Chaze, Head of the Healthcare Systems Unit, DG Health and Consumers, European Commission

Health systems play a central role in our societies: they help each of us maintain and improve our health, making a massive contribution to the wellbeing of us all.

However, health systems are more and more exposed to several stress factors: the population in Europe is getting older and needs more and better care; modern technologies provide effective care but this comes at a cost; the health workforce is unevenly distributed and struggle to cover the needs, and with the economic crisis governments have to make difficult decisions with limited budgets.

For these reasons, and to stimulate a wide debate on health systems in the EU, the European Commission adopted last April a Communication on effective, accessible and resilient health systems.

In fact, as a precondition to any other consideration, health systems need to be effective: they must be able to produce positive health outcomes: to help people improve their health.

But effectiveness alone is not enough. Health systems must also be accessible: people in need have to be able to get the care they deserve.

And finally, modern health systems have to be resilient: they must be able to adapt effectively to rapidly changing environments, tackling significant challenges with limited resources.

The Communication identifies several actions that we can undertake to measure and increase effectiveness and accessibility as well as improve resilience of health systems of the Member States. These actions include, for instance, health systems performance assessment, eHealth, and planning of EU health workforce. Taken together, they build a possible policy agenda that could be developed with Member States to usefully contribute to better healthcare for EU patients and to the reduction of health inequalities.