2023-09-07 11:11:19
A group of Spanish scientists and politicians from the left and right agree on a proposal to reform the health system, request a transversal State pact for ten years and publish the conclusions in The Lancet worldwide.
Intensive Care Unit of the General Hospital of Valencia in 2014. EFE/Manuel Bruque
Strengthening and transforming Spanish healthcare must be a priority for the next legislature. And for the next decade. In Spain and around the world. politicians of Popular Party, the Socialist Party of Catalonia, Más Madrid or the Vasco Nationalist Partyresponsible for health in the institutions they represent, together with a group of scientists, launched for the first time after the Covid-19 pandemic a proposal to reform and transform the health system based on transversal political pacts and agreements between institutions and science.
The scientific journal The Lancet has published an article signed by Sara Jaurrieta (head of health for the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya), Muriel Larrea (president of the Popular Party of Gipuzkoa and member of the Basque Health Commission), Javier Padilla (spokesperson for Health de Más Madrid) or Itxaso Berrojalbiz (spokesperson for Health of the Basque Nationalist Party in the regional Parliament until the last elections in May and, currently, a regional deputy) who marks the path of the reforms that health needs.
The article, coordinated by the scientist Helena Legido-Quigley (the only Spaniard who participated in the panel of experts of the World Health Organization for the management of the Covid-19 pandemic), is an international milestone since for the first time politicians of the main parties draw attention to the need to reform our healthcare system after the pandemic and set out a roadmap.
Likewise, the Spanish scientists Montserrat Gea-Sánchez (Spain and Health-Care Research Group & former General Director of Health Professionals of the Generalitat de Catalunya), Manuel Franco (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), Sergio Minue (specialist in Family and Community Medicine), José María Valderas (Prof. Medicine, Division of Family Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine) and Tomás Zapata (director of human resources of the World Health Organization) also sign the article that sends a message from Spain to the world.
The path of health system reform
The increase in life expectancy or therapeutic innovation requires that health systems adapt to better care for patients and transform the current National Health System in which for a long time the priority has been on care for acute patients , being necessary to evolve it towards one based on prevention, with reinforced primary care that allows monitoring of chronic diseases and with adequate financing so that advanced therapies and precision medicine are accessible to all.
The article addresses the need for a new governance and relationship between science and institutions, the challenges necessary for the modernization of the system, the need for a new portfolio of services or the demand for better financing.
The signatories, scientists and representatives of the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya, the Popular Party, Más Madrid or the Basque Nationalist Party, recall that health spending in Spain is below the EU27 average, requiring a reform in its financing and have agreed to demand that the next regional financing system set the bases for a better investment and distribution.
They also promote a State Pact to promote a ten-year strategy.
The article, coordinated by Legido-Quigley, represents a milestone for Spanish politics, where it is increasingly difficult to forge large agreements, but it is also a milestone at the international level, where it is necessary to open a debate on how to improve our health systems in a context of population aging, new therapies or new pandemics.
How did the initiative come about?
The initiative arose almost two years ago in one of the sessions on health organized by beBartlet with the support of AstraZeneca.
“We promote spaces for social transformation and innovation in public policies led by institutional leaders of Spanish politics from the logic of plurality and with the aim of generating the conditions for reaching large transversal agreements in the medium term in areas such as health, the ecological transition or culture”, says Nacho Corredor, partner-founder of beBartlet and promoter of the initiative.
Marta Moreno, Director of Corporate Affairs and Market Access at AstraZeneca Spain, emphasizes that “public-private collaboration is necessary to make the Spanish public health system sustainable. With initiatives like this we want to promote that great consensus among the great political parties of our country and that with this project have shown a great sense of State, leaving aside their differences, for the benefit of patients and Spanish citizens.
“In 2022 we promoted the Health Mission, a space where we summon politicians from the main parties. A few weeks before, I read an interview by Legido-Quigley about how two years after the start of the pandemic, the healthcare systems in Europe had not changed substantially. We didn’t know each other, I contacted her and invited her to share her diagnosis with Spanish politicians from various parties and after hearing how many of them agreed on the diagnosis, two of the attendees, one from the left and the other from the right, had the idea of generating a debate about the need to reform the system and Legido-Quigley picked up the gauntlet. We have spent almost two years generating the conditions of trust between different parties so that this could have happened. The result has been a milestone for politics in Spain and in the West”, concludes Corredor.
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