However crude hospital mortality rates do not account for the complexity or severity of the cases treated, are thus too blunt an instrument to measure or compare the quality of hospital services across facilities. In Kazakhstan, around one person dies for every 10 000 hospitalised. This does not mean that hospitals in Kazakhstan are 100 times safer. A more reasonable interpretation would be that the nature of hospitals and the range of treatments they provide in Kazakhstan differ profoundly from those of OECD countries, that patients in Kazakhstan hospitals are likely to be less unwell or are admitted for the treatment of less serious conditions that in OECD countries might not be considered to require hospital admission.