**6. Conclusion**

The aim of this study is to compare the impact of the four latest lists of causes of death on the age‐standardised amenable death rates across the European Union countries in 2014. Our results showed that the rank order of countries does not change significantly, even though we applied Nolte and McKee, Tobias and Yeh, AMIEHS or EUROSTAT's concepts. In addition, we analysed whether age‐standardised rates of amenable mortality based on AMIEHS or EUROSTAT's list are significantly different by sex and causes of death in Slovakia. We revealed that amenable mortality rates calculated by sex under the EUROSTAT's list were significantly higher than to the rates under the AMIEHS's list. This finding suggests that the structure of diseases together with the given age limits significantly influence the value of standardised amenable death rates, and hence, it is beneficial to develop the concept of amenable mortality at the national level in the light of actual availability of medical skills and effective treatments in the country.

Our results can serve as a valuable platform for revising the 'Strategic framework of health system in the Slovak Republic' aimed at increasing effectiveness of the health care system. Accurate quantification of the impacts of morbidity, comorbidities, socio‐economic factors, lifestyle, health behaviours and others factors provide an extensive support in the interpretation of the development of avoidable mortality not only in international comparisons, but also in the development Slovak's own avoidable mortality methodology.

## **Acknowledgements**

This chapter was created within the project supported by the Scientific Grant Agency of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic 1/0945/17 Research of the economic quantification of marketing processes aimed at increasing the value for the patient, multi‐dimensional analyses of the marketing mix of health facilities and quantification of their importance in the process of establishing a system to measure the quality and effectiveness of health system in the Slovak Republic. The authors thank to the National Health Information Centre of the Slovak Republic for providing access to the central mortality database for the explored period as well as the other studied data along with the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic. They also acknowledge the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic for its cooperation in creation of the new conceptions and methodologies and for its support of our research activities.

## **Author details**

Beata Gavurova\* and Tatiana Vagasova

\*Address all correspondence to: beata.gavurova@tuke.sk

Faculty of Economics, Technical University of Košice, Němcovej, Košice, Slovakia
