2023-12-31 17:15:00
Medical equipment was also approved in the health reform process in the House of Representatives as a primary care strategy.
Photo: Mauricio Alvarado Lozada
In the resolution to increase the UPC (the money given to the EPS for the care of each of its members), the Government included a condition that guarantees millionaire resources for the so-called “territorial medical teams.” These are mobile health and medical care units that operate outside of conventional health centers or hospitals. They are designed to bring health services to remote, rural or hard-to-reach areas where people may have difficulty accessing health care.
These units, which have existed for a few years, acquired a new protagonist in the current government, which wants to promote them in its primary health care strategy. In the resolution of this December 30, the Ministry of Health included article 11 that orders that the EPS of the contributory regime allocate a minimum of 5% of the UPC resources they receive for the operation of these basic equipment.
You can see: “It is not viable and it is not sustainable”: EPS react to the increase in UPC
This condition guarantees millionaire resources for this strategy in 2024. By July of this year, for example, the State had transferred around $46.5 billion pesos to the EPS. More than 90% of all that money was from the UPC. If these entities had had to allocate 5% to extramural medical equipment, that would have meant, until July alone, just over $2 billion pesos.
Academics such as Johnattan García Ruiz, from the Harvard University School of Public Health, estimate that this condition will cost around $4 billion annually. “This in practice reduces the increase in the UPC,” García wrote on his account on X (formerly Twitter). “In 2023, the country will invest $50 billion in this equipment. Do we know how it went? Where are they? What impact are they having? There is no further information about their results, but now they will have almost 40 times more resources? ”He added.
The medical teams were approved in the health reform process in the House of Representatives as a primary care strategy. The project says that they are interdisciplinary groups made up of community, technical, professional and specialized profiles for the comprehensive health care of people, families and communities on a permanent basis, which will be organized by the Primary Health Care Centers and will carry out permanent characterization, early detection and protection actions through intramural and extramural modalities with the support of telehealth and telemedicine.
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