Primary care: reforms based on innovation

The primary care reform initiated in Spain in 1985 was inspired by the Alma-Ata statement that WHO had proclaimed a few years earlier. The need for change was evident since the previous model was characterized by access difficulties, the predominance of curative care, medical orientation focused on diseases and the absolute lack of teamwork. Thirty years later, primary care is in a crisis of exhaustion due to multiple factors, of which the lack of budgetary endowment, the ageing of the population and the rigidities and bureaucracies of which it has been endowed stand out, and for a long time the call for reforming the reformed has been heard and create a new model more appropriate to the present day.

Do we need "bonsai" hospitals?

Joan Escarrabill

The ideal size of the hospital and the minimal activity (number of procedures) it has to do to ensure quality is a recurring debate. Sometimes the issue of the hospital size is related to the primary care’s ability to solve and, therefore, the possibility of closing acute beds (and redistributing the budget that was intended for its operation). In the 2009 EESRI edition, in Table 10 (page 21), there’s a very significant information: the number of acute beds per 1,000 inhabitants. According to this document, in Catalonia we have 2.4 beds per 1,000 inhabitants and in the whole of Spain 2.5. Only Turkey (2.3) and Finland (1.9) have fewer beds per 1,000 inhabitants than we do. Despite the data, there are people who insist on the convenience of closing acute beds if the primary care resolution capacity increases. It seems to me that there’s a better question: too many beds or too many hospitals?