The health of the Portuguese varies depending on the area in which they live, which may be due to their illnesses, as well as access to medical care and allocated resources, reveals the first Atlas of Health Variation in the Portuguese social network.
The paper, which will be unveiled Tuesday in Lisbon, highlights differences in care delivery and patient outcomes to help healthcare professionals, policy makers and citizens make better decisions, the authors say.
This research project was coordinated by the CoLAB Collaborative Value for Health Laboratory in collaboration with the National School of Public Health of the University of Nova de Lisbon (ENSP-Nova).
The researchers note that the Atlas is not intended to assess the quality of hospitals, but to monitor the performance of medical care for the population living in different areas, which may have several justifications.
“This Atlas shows that depending on the area in which we live, we get different health outcomes, which are not only the result of illness and not only the result of citizens’ preferences, they can be the result of health care access problems, literacy issues and can be the result of very important resource use or allocation issues,” cardiothoracic surgeon José Fragata told Lusa.
The study, which has already been carried out in several countries, presents 21 maps that include diseases associated with high efforts in the number of procedures and, as a result, costs for SNS (cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, diabetes mellitus, caesarean section, hip fracture). , serious mental illness).
It displays the number of hospitalizations, their duration and mortality between January 2018 and October 31, 2019, a period that allowed us to exclude the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on medical practice and define this period as a comparison for future analyses.
“This is an atlas for diagnosing variation based on the geography we live in and provides tools for in-depth study to better understand and implement measures,” defended José Fragata.
According to the specialist, it was already known that there is a variation in health (expected and undesirable), but the amplitude that was found was not expected: “It is unthinkable that health outcomes can vary by 3.4 times depending on the region. countries with an area of 89,000 square kilometers”, which can mean “expenditure, inequality”.
“Even with regard to cardiovascular disease, as a rule, the hinterland and regions to the south have health indicators that, for example, move away from the coast, and therefore it is worth looking at the reason for this deviation,” José Fragata defended.
In case of COPD [Doença Pulmonar Obstrutiva Crónica]for example, ENSP-Nova director Sonia Diaz notes that “citizens living in cities in the north of the country end up with much higher hospitalization rates” compared to those of residents “inland or further south” of the country.
“It happens in different ways and with different profiles in different diseases,” said Sonia Diaz, noting that most diseases with higher mortality and morbidity have multifactorial causes, whether genetic, demographic, environmental or even behavioral in nature, that justify different characteristics of epidemiological conditions. observed in the regions.
He stressed that it is “important” from a public health perspective that most of these causes can be prevented or foreseen.
Therefore, he drew attention to the importance of implementing policies and interventions, for example, in the field of health promotion and disease prevention, including health literacy and how citizens can be held accountable for improving part of their health, as well as more interventions. target health profiles and needs in different regions to reduce inequalities.
From a service organization perspective, this knowledge can ensure that resources and access to care are “better and better matched” to needs, for example, in diagnosis and treatment.
Ana Rita Londral, Executive Director of CoLAB Value for Health, said in turn that the Atlas “is not intended to make a direct judgment about a given disease,” but to depict “small variations and make everyone think about the origin of this variant.” “.
“The danger is that we immediately jump to the conclusion that variation is about quality,” because there are times when variation can be justified, the researcher said, concluding that the atlas should be “a discussion tool.” .
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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