28 de novembre 2013

Being transparent

Central de Resultats. Àmbit d’atenció primària. Dades 2012 

Today a new health budget is going to be presented. The focus will be on cutbacks. I'm really tired about talking always about the same in the Parliament. If public income is decreasing, public expenditure follows, changing priorities or more debt are not an option. Therefore, it may be better to know how money is spent and what are the outcomes.
You may check excellent information about primary care performance in this report, an example of transparency. The number of primary care visits in the public system is still falling (-2,5%, 1,1 m less). Instead of decreasing human resources there was a slight increase in full time employees in primary care. The aggregated impact has been a reduction in the number of physician visits per day in 3,2%  (average 2012: 24,5 visits).
One fact to highlight is that less visits have been performed, and we don't know exactly if this means anything special in health terms. In the next future, an update on morbidity will be introduced in the report.

PS. Good news. A new registry of health professionals will be created. Unfortunately we can't project the needs for the future and regulate access. It's only an issue of time, things are going in the right way.

PS. LSE Conference: Behavioral Economics and Diet. It is worth watching it.