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quinta-feira, 27 de outubro de 2011

From crisis depression to prospective health governance - Spring Report 2011, Portuguese Observatory on Health Systems

The mission of the Portuguese Observatory for the Health Systems(OPSS) is to provide all those who can influence the health in Portugal with an accurate, periodic and independent analysis of the Portuguese Health System evolution and its determinants.
Since the year 2000, the OPSS follows up, analyses and reports the development of the Portuguese Health System and the quality evolution of health governance, not taking a position about the political agendas in the different governing periods. Following the previous and predominantly retrospective analyses, for the year 2011, the OPSS developed and grounded a prospective analysis model, assuming that a substantial improvement in the country’s health governance passes by the introduction of highly prospective and adaptive tools. This new model will outline, understand the propositions for the health sector and co-exist with the retrospective analysis, because the OPSS finds it necessary and useful to understand the development of the different reforms and measures. The change in this Spring Report (SR) streamlines with a series of initiatives developed by the OPSS in order to increase the quality of the work developed, and those have only been possible due to the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
The presentation of the SR 2011 entitled “From the depression of the crisis, to the prospective health governance” takes place in a very special moment of the country very special moment. The financial crisis is a reality for a growing number of people through phenomena such as: decrease of purchasing power, high unemployment rate and the consequent risk of poverty, with all its implications. The response to the crisis has become the core of all the discussions and of the European agenda. Within this context, Portugal underwent an intervention, from what has been designated as “troika” (International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Union) and therefore, is subjected to a set of measures aiming to reestablish the confidence of the markets and to create the conditions to meet the international commitments.
The Spring Report 2011 is structured in two main parts: first the presentation of sectoral studies about the existing health system; second, the analysis of the present moment and the future perspective of health governance in times of crisis.