Cheers!!!
Here’s to the numerous achievements of this innovative health system!!!
Let us honor and reward those responsible for these victories!!!
Let us sit at the same table, walk alongside them, and become one of them...
It is humanly impossible to understand how it is possible to produce so much, with so little resources, so little power, so little time and so little policy. There is so much evidence of the benefits that the words written here would be insufficient to describe it, especially in relation to the important results obtained in one’s personal healthcare.
So, struggling not to hold back on the truth, without minimizing the recognition of such evidence, I will limit myself to ten (10) minor aspects, in which the results are not very visible and palpable, but can clearly illustrate these actions and their effects.
Action nº 1: standardizing conducts for various clinical situations, through evidence-based guidelines. Effect nº 1: homogeneity and equity in healthcare for all patients, to the point of not identifying differences in the quality of the public and private systems.
Action nº 2: releasing (all based on scientific evidence) the register of medications, but at the same time not clearing its use in the public system. Effect nº 2: conflict and chaos in decision making, putting physicians, patients and service providers against each other.
Action nº 3: valuing physicians and healthcare professionals, providing them with optimal working conditions. Effect nº 3: irresistible attraction among physicians and professionals to work mainly in the public system, including “international physicians” who voluntarily cooperate with the program.
Action nº 4: involving the judiciary in decision-making in health, as evidence of scientific credibility and multidisciplinary vision. Effect nº 4: judges take on a role that does not belong to them, and for which they are not prepared, although despite this they have to defend the rights denied to patients.
Action nº 5: minimal and improper investment in public health policies, maintaining the epidemic incidence of old and new diseases in the territory. Effect nº 5: standing out on the world scenario as an exporter of diseases, but always with a certain degree of internal exclusivity.
Action nº 6: regulating the release of diagnostic procedures, based on evidence and with fair distribution in the territory. Effect nº 6: encouragement and consolidation of the culture of “overdiagnosis” in society, where doing more, no matter what it entails, is better than doing nothing or doing less.
Action nº 7: regulating the indications for therapeutic procedures, and encouraging shared decision-making between physician and patient. Effect nº 7: world record holder in unnecessary and inadvisable procedures (such as cesarean section), with physician and/or patients attributed with co-authoring this record.
Action nº 8: using evidence in the fight against futility and waste, the applicability to the individual, and the implementation according to a loco-regional distribution of the main problems. Effect nº 8: achievement of economic sustainability in health and the strengthening of primary care.
Action nº 9: providing health services properly throughout the entire territory, guaranteeing the necessary minimum, attending to differences in local priorities, measuring the results, and modulating strategies. Effect nº 9: improvement of health indexes and achievement of patient satisfaction.
Action nº 10: educating based on scientific evidence, with masters of strange languages, who teach what they do not do, do not understand what we write or speak, but who cares? What matters is that everyone wins. Effect nº 10: Effects nº 1 to nº 10.
Numerous other actions could be described here, but these would redundantly lead to the same conclusions: the scientific evidence created in this country (or these countries), the values and preferences of its patients, and the experience of its physicians were, until recently, the mainstay support in decision-making for these innovative systems of private and public health.
RAMB, the Journal of the Brazilian Medical Association, has been a vehicle for selfless and competent minds who strive every day to produce scientific evidence to be used in the best care for our patients. Each edition serves as a living memory that records the results of that effort, allowing it to be measured, used, and never forgotten.
This editorial was also written to register a few of the results measured in an innovative health system, lest we forget those (the “system” is not a person) who have innovated the healthcare of their patients and, lastly, so we could reflect on the usefulness and adoption of these “parents”, because in their world there is no threat of change or variation, although there is and always will be the appropriate toast to their health!!!
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
Dec 2016
