title: Making sense of health rankings.
abstract: In an era of increasingly complex medical care and escalating costs, healthcare decision-makers often rely on a broad range of indicators to gauge the health of a population, the quality of hospital care and the performance of healthcare systems. Reports that rank the health of Canadians and Canada's healthcare systems according to these indicators are widely cited in the media. These reports attempt to condense a complicated array of statistics into a relatively simple number, a rank that is used to make international and provincial comparisons. These reports have often been inconsistent. Unlike a familiar economic indicator - the gross domestic product (GDP), which represents a complex entity with a single number calculated according to an internationally agreed-upon methodology - rankings of health and healthcare are not yet standardized or well understood. This article aims to improve readers' understanding of ranking reports. It outlines the components and processes that underlie health rankings and explores why such rankings can be difficult to interpret.
authors.affiliation: Special projects lead, contributes to analytical work and participates in writing reports for CIHI's Western Office, in Victoria, British Columbia.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hewitt
authors.affiliation: Co-author of CIHI's report Making Sense of Health Rankings, was, at the time of that report's publication, assistant chief statistician of analysis and development for Statistics Canada. He is now Canada research chair in population health modelling/populomics, in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, in Ottawa, Ontario.
authors.forename: Michael C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Wolfson
mesh_terms: D002170:Canada; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000145:classification*