Indicators in primary care: reality or desire. SESPAS report 2012

The aim of this article is two-fold: firstly, to illustrate international experiences of assessing primary care performance by using examples of both cross-country comparisons and national assessment efforts and, secondly, to describe the progress achieved to date in the articulation of the Spanish Primary Care Information System. The central role assigned to primary care in conceptual frameworks clashes with the severe limitations in the quality and availability of the data required to construct the indicators. The lack of systematic and standardized databases covering diagnosis, procedures and intermediate results in individual patients is endemic across countries. Filling this gap has become a priority in most countries, especially during the last decade. In Spain, the concept of the Primary Care Information System appeared in 2003 and the first data/results were published in 2006. Since then, distinct elements have been progressively incorporated with the involvement of the various autonomous regions in Spain. Currently, the system includes various aspects such as the population assigned, the available resources, a national catalogue of primary care centers, and activity. The next challenge in this work in progress is to build a database of clinical information.     

Clinical practice guidelines and primary care. SESPAS report 2012

Clinical practice guidelines are intended to serve as a bridge between the decision levels and the sources of knowledge, giving decision makers the best synthesis of scientific evidence and an analysis of context, to provide elements of judgement and to transfer scientific knowledge into clinical practice. However, the actual impact on health care is variable and effectiveness in changing medical practice, moderate. Qualitative and quantitative studies show that most primary care physicians consider that the guides are a valuable source of advice and training and a kind of improving the quality of healthcare. However, they underline its rigidity, the difficulty to apply to individual patients and that their main goal is to reduce healthcare costs. In Spain, there are several experiences as GuíaSalud in developing clinical practice guidelines aimed specifically at primary care. However, the proper implementation of a clinical practice guideline includes not only the quality and thoroughness of the evidence, but the credibility of professionals and organizations and other contextual factors such as characteristics of patients, providers and organizations or systems. An important step in future research is to develop a better theoretical understanding of organizational change that is required for management and professionals to give appropriate guidance to the implementation of the clinical practice guidelines.     

Integrated delivery systems and other examples of collaboration among providers. SESPAS report, 2012

Because of the steady increase in healthcare complexity, due to high specialization and the involvement of a number of services, as well as the increase in patients with chronic diseases and pluripathology, coordination has become a high-priority need in healthcare systems. The distinct regional services that comprise the decentralized Spanish National Health System have developed a number of experiences to improve collaboration among the providers involved in the healthcare process. The present article aims to analyze the experiences with integrated healthcare providers in Catalonia and the Basque Country and the chronic diseases programs of the latter. In Catalonia, which promoted the purchaser-provider split and maintained diversity in providers' ownership, organizations were slowly created that manage the provision of the healthcare continuum, known as integrated healthcare organizations (IHO). These organizations have evolved and, despite some common characteristics, they also show some differences, such as the emphasis on formal instruments or on coordination mechanisms and organic structures. This is also reflected in their results regarding culture and perceived coordination across the organization. In the Basque Country, in addition to the establishment of an IHO, a variety of integration experiences have been developed to improve the care of chronic diseases.     

The reform of primary care, between the last refuge of adventure and innovation. SESPAS report 2012

Primary care reforms started thirty years ago, but not fully developed their potential. Improvements should be suggested to be accompanied by adequate funding, operational capacity and organization and clinical skills adapt to upgrading and trivialized demand, bureaucracy and medicalization. Organizational-suggested reforms have not shown conclusive differences yet. On the other hand, neither pro-content nor pro-coordination reforms have shown any impact on the derived demand, the cost of care attention or the health outcomes. Thanks to the support of the information systems, bureaucracy has been reduced and care continuity may be promoted. In the middle management level, some measures have been suggested to promote accessibility, restore capitation by payment systems, perform and resolve capacity, improve integration of social care and health care resources, actively engage professionals with the health system-objectives of quality and efficiency and, finally, add more clinical, preventive and community collaboration-contents.     

Financial incentives in improving healthcare quality. SESPAS Report 2012

We address the contribution of financial incentives linked to pay for performance (P4P) to improving the quality of care. The situation of P4P is analyzed internationally and in the distinct health services in Spain. The participation of P4P in wage compensation and the effects of the current economic crisis on these incentives is discussed. We review the results of recent studies to clarify the role of these incentive models and assess possible orientations and new proposals.     

Primary care pediatrics in the public health system of the twenty-first century. SESPAS report 2012

Today in our country, the primary care pediatrician is the first contact between children and adolescents with the health system, being also a highly resolving specialist that addresses over 90% of the health needs of this population, monitors growth and development and participates in all activities of prevention, health promotion and health education within primary care teams with nurses and family doctors. Witnessing rapid and profound demographic, social, cultural, scientific and technological changes as well as the demands and expectations of health care for citizens, which should enhance the value and response capacity of primary care. These changes also affect infant morbidity and health care priorities in child and adolescent, posing new challenges for primary care practice and reinforce the role of the pediatrician in primary care. Primary care is not only the gateway to the health system. Primary care teams have to take responsibility for the care of people assigned to coordinate the necessary resources and advising citizens on their health problems and his itinerary care by the health system. It identifies the need to foster teamwork within the health department involved nursing staff to take care activities in this age group. It aims to foster a model based on cooperation and complementarity. A recent systematic review recommended maintaining the figure of the pediatrician in primary care teams and strengthen their specific role as first point of contact with the child's health care system, found significant benefits for children.     

Primary care: an increasingly important contributor to effectiveness, equity, and efficiency of health services. SESPAS report 2012

As of 2005, the literature on the benefits of primary care oriented health systems was consistent in showing greater effectiveness, greater efficiency, and greater equity. In the ensuing five years, nothing changed that conclusion, but there is now greater understanding of the mechanisms by which the benefits of primary care are achieved. We now know that, within certain bounds, neither the wealth of a country nor the total number of health personnel are related to health levels. What counts is the existence of key features of health policy (Primary Health Care): universal financial coverage under government control or regulation, attempts to distribute resources equitably, comprehensiveness of services, and low or no copayments for primary care services. All of these, in combination, produce better primary care: greater first contact access and use, more person-focused care over time, greater range of services available and provided when needed, and coordination of care. The evidence is no longer confined mainly to industrialized countries, as new studies show it to be the case in middle and lower income countries. The endorsements of the World Health Organization (in the form of the reports of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health and the World Health Report of 2008, as well a number of other international commissions, reflect the widespread acceptance of the importance of primary health care. Primary health care can now be measured and assessed; all innovations and enhancements in it must serve its essential features in order to be useful.     

Social inequalities in health and primary care. SESPAS Report 2012

The health system is a social determinant of health. Although not the most important determinant of health, the health system's potential contribution to reducing social inequalities in health should not be underestimated. Due to its characteristics, primary health care is well placed to attain equity in health. To make progress in achieving this goal, the main measures to be considered are the removal of barriers to access to services, the provision of care proportionate to need, and engagement in intersectoral work. This article reviews the background and framework for action to tackle social inequalities in health and provides a summary of the primary health care actions that could help to reduce social inequalities in health and are mentioned in the most important national and international documents on health policy. We hope to stimulate debate, promote research in the field and encourage implementation. The proposals are grouped in the following five intervention lines: information systems; participation; training; intersectoral work; and reorientation of health care. Each intervention is ordered according to its targets (population and civil society; primary health team; health center and health area management; and health policy decision-makers).     

Contributions and perspectives of the multiprofessional team to the health basket in primary care. SESPAS report 2012

For primary health care to have an impact on health in the community, the involvement of multiple professionals is essential. The health team should include the knowledge and experience of distinct professional disciplines, with a results-oriented approach. This new approach requires the team to share key elements, such as the electronic record, the organization of care for different population groups, quality systems, and consultations among professionals in the same center. Examples of these interrelations are a woman attending an prenatal visit being referred to preventive dentistry, a smoking adult referred from dentistry to the family doctor or nurse, and a patient with low back pain referred from physiotherapy to a consultation on contraception. The present article analyzes the actions and perspectives of different disciplines in oral health care, sexual health / reproductive care and physiotherapy.     

Interaction between the social and the health systems. SESPAS Report 2012

Act 39/2006, of 14th December, for the Promotion of Personal Autonomy and the Care of Dependent Individuals establishes the basic conditions for the promotion of personal autonomy and the care of the dependent through the creation of the System of Autonomy and Care of Dependent Individuals and constitutes an excellent opportunity to make progress in the development of a health care space. The aim of healthcare integration is to move from a fragmented framework, in which individuals apply for and receive health benefits and care benefits separately, to a new model of shared responsibility. Since the 1980s, several national and regional projects of healthcare cooperation have been developed. However, although substantial efforts have been made in some autonomous regions of Spain, healthcare coordination seems to predominate over integration in the health setting.     

La medicina familiar y comunitaria y la universidad. Informe SESPAS 2012

Family and community medicine is an academic subject, a medical specialty and a health profession with distinct dimensions: healthcare, teaching, research and management. In this discipline, the object of knowledge is the person, understood as a whole. Family medicine, as an academic subject, and primary care, as a health education setting, should be incorporated into the core graduate and postgraduate curricula. The absence of these elements leads to training bias and has major repercussions on quality, coordination and patient safety. The development of the Health Professions Act and the construction of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) have created a favorable climate for the presence of this discipline in the university.Since the 1960s, family medicine has been consolidated as an academic subject with its own departments in almost all European universities, and a significant number of family physicians are teachers. A balance has been achieved between the hospital-based system (based on theory, disease, and the biological model) and the patient-centred model (based on problem solving, community-oriented and the bio-psycho-social model). The introduction of family and community medicine as a specific subject, and as a transverse subject and as an option in practicals, represents the adaptation of the educational system to social needs. This adaptation also represents a convergence with other European countries and the various legal requirements protecting this convergence. However, this new situation requires a new structure (departments) and faculty (professors and associate and assistant professors).     

Health workforce planning and training, with emphasis on primary care. SESPAS Report 2012

The present article provides an overview of workforce planning for health professionals in Spain, with emphasis on physicians and primary care. We analyze trends, describe threats and make some suggestions. In Spain some structural imbalances remain endemic, such as the low number of nurses with respect to physicians, which may become a barrier to needed reforms. The new medical degree, with the rank of master, will not involve major changes to training. Nursing, which will require a university degree, leaves a gap that will be filled by nursing assistants.This domino effect ends in family medicine, which has no upgrading potential. Hence reasonable objectives for the system are to prioritize the post-specialization training of family physicians, enhance their research capacity and define a career that does not equate productivity with seniority. What is undergoing a crisis of identity and prestige is family medicine, not primary care. There is a risk that the specialty of family medicine will lose rank after the specialty of emergency medicine is approved. Today, about 40% of emergency physicians in the public network are specialists, most of them in family medicine. In 2010 a new fact emerged: an elite of foreign doctors obtained positions as resident medical interns in highly sought-after specialties through the national competitive examination. This phenomenon should be closely monitored and requires Spain to define the pattern of internationalization of health professionals in a clear and precise model.     

Continuity of care, innovation and redefinition of professional roles in the healthcare of chronically and terminally ill patients. SESPAS report 2012

Continuity of care is essential to address the multiple needs of the chronically and terminally ill. To achieve this aim, the organizational barriers of the different levels of care must be overcome by establishing appropriate coordination mechanisms. Interest in finding effective solutions to the problems that threaten continuity of care is increasing, favoring the continued development of professional and institutional strategies to improve coordination. The present article explores some of the proposals to improve the coordination of care in primary care settings, from the point of view of nursing, social work and palliative care. Due to the increase in patients with chronic and complex needs and multimorbidity, the number and quality of home visits should be increased. The effectiveness of home care depends on the regularity of follow-up and the stability of the healthcare programs, rather than on the service responsible for monitoring the patient or the professional responsible for home visits.     

New technologies in primary care: people, machines, records, and networks. SESPAS Report 2012

The new technologies and the importance of their development in primary care are clear. Technology is important insofar as it helps to resolve practical problems that arise when attempts are made to improve patient care. Many applications can be found under the heading of "new information and communication technologies" in healthcare, but the present article focusses on two of the most significant examples: the electronic health record and the Internet, bearing in mind that the aims being sought and the people using these applications are more significant than the technologies themselves.     

Incentivos financieros en la mejora de la calidad asistencial. Informe SESPAS 2012

We address the contribution of financial incentives linked to pay for performance (P4P) to improving the quality of care. The situation of P4P is analyzed internationally and in the distinct health services in Spain. The participation of P4P in wage compensation and the effects of the current economic crisis on these incentives is discussed. We review the results of recent studies to clarify the role of these incentive models and assess possible orientations and new proposals.