Using life expectancy a proxy, health outcomes are much lower than expected in Latvia Given the level of GDP per capita (Figure 1.12). Chile, Poland and Hungary have higher life expectancies for a similar per capita GDP - and all these countries spend a larger share of GDP on health. This suggests that increasing spending on health should be an option that Latvia considers. Improving health system efficiency will also be critical. The number of hospital beds has fallen from 8.8 per 1 000 population to 5.8, approaching to the OECD average of 4.8 (Figure 1.14). The length of hospital stay is 7.6 days on average for all causes, shorter than the OECD average of 8.1 (OECD, 2015e).