This analysis of the Czech health system reviews recent developments in organization and governance, health financing, health-care provision, health reforms and health system performance. The Czech health-care system is based on compulsory statutory health insurance providing virtually universal coverage and a broad range of benefits, and doing so at 7.7 % of GDP in 2012 - well below the EU average - of which a comparatively high 85 % was publicly funded. Some important health indicators are better than the EU averages (such as mortality due to respiratory disease) or even among the best in the world (in terms of infant mortality, for example). On the other hand, mortality rates for diseases of the circulatory system and malignant neoplasms are well above the EU average, as are a range of health-care utilization rates, such as outpatient contacts and average length of stay in acute care hospitals. In short, there is substantial potential in the Czech Republic for efficiency gains and to improve health outcomes. Furthermore, the need for reform in order to financially sustain the system became evident again after the global financial crisis, but there is as yet no consensus about how to achieve this.

Berlin University of Technology and European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies

Czech Ministry of Finance

Environment Center Charles University Prague

Faculty of Social Sciences Charles University Prague

Development of telemedicine in the Czech Republic from patients' and other key stakeholders' perspective

The NBN founder mutation-Evidence for a country specific difference in age at cancer manifestation

Cognitive and Socioemotional Development at 5 and 9 Years of Age of Children Born with Very Low Birth Weight and Extremely Low Birth Weight in the Czech Republic

Czech and Slovak Dental Students' Oral Health-Related Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviours (KAB): Multi-Country Cross-Sectional Study

What is being done to respond to the rise of chronic diseases and multi-morbidity in Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia?

Regional inequalities and substitutability of health resources in the Czech Republic: a five methods of evaluation

Dysglycemia and Abnormal Adiposity Drivers of Cardiometabolic-Based Chronic Disease in the Czech Population: Biological, Behavioral, and Cultural/Social Determinants of Health

Unwillingness to participate in health checks for cardiometabolic diseases: A survey among primary health care patients in five European countries

The Use of Diagnosis-Related Group-Based Reimbursement in the Czech Hospital Care System

The out-of-pocket burden of chronic diseases: the cases of Belgian, Czech and German older adults

Anticipated Social and Healthcare Economic Burden of People with Alzheimer's Disease in Two Selected Regions of the Czech Republic

The Reducing Hospital Costs through Horizontal Integration

Between 'Pioneers' of the Cardiovascular Revolution and Its 'Late Followers': Mortality Changes in the Czech Republic and Poland Since 1968

Medical and economic burden of influenza in the elderly population in central and eastern European countries

Overview of healthcare system in the Czech Republic