Public health: by users, with professionals.
Spain, March 2012.- from that at the end of the year 1987 the official bulletin of the State devoted the transfer to the autonomous community of the Basque country the functions and services of the National Institute of health (INSALUD), users, workers and politicians have worked shoulder to shoulder, hard and for long yearsto ensure that the health – Osakidetza service Basque is one of the best public services of health in Europe.
While we are all aware that our system has various aspects that have to be improved, we cannot recognize the high quality treasures. They have been many contributions: the first, from the pockets of taxpayers, following the design of innovative policies, the implementation of new management models, the incorporation of best practices based on scientific evidence, of listening to the considerations of the patients themselves, of the incorporation of innovative and cost effective technologies for the implementation of strategies that anticipate the problems that will be presented to medium and long term, etc.
Cyclically, economic crises plague neo-liberal economies, in a few movements of peaks and valleys that many readers have already passed, maybe even several times. Of all these crises we have drawn valuable conclusions that have helped us out of them with more force and solidity than with which it entered.
Perhaps one of the conclusions that the members of the Forum of health professional schools of Bizkaia believe that most have provided us with is the consider the austerity as a virtue and not an external obligation. It is rejecting waste and implement austerity, as a value, in the decision-making that we face every day.
Continuous improvement of care in Osakidetza not due solely to a major and progressive contribution of economic resources, but also to improvements in management models, advances in clinical care, health technologies, etc. Improvements which, ultimately, are always directed to maintaining the health of citizens, reconciling them always with the required efficiency.
However, against the virtue of austerity, the professionals who work in the Basque health are perceived subtly the threat of something completely different, as it is the inadequacy of the resources in the near future.
Although all systems, for the mere fact of being human creations, are susceptible of improvement, it should not lose sight that, so such systems work properly, require certain resources to ensure its proper functioning.
Is not only material, technological resources or of medicines and health products, but of the professionals, have enough hands to care and cure patients manage their needs, provide with responsibility the Pharmacotherapy, serving children and adults, etc.
As health professionals who work in different fields, at the service of the health of citizens, we know largely and in a real way what aspects of the Basque public health may be susceptible of improvement in its effectiveness and efficiency. We treasure a valuable, useful and knowledge able to offer new solutions to existing problems in a quick manner and agile.
We have a willingness of service to citizens and therefore demand that you cuts that they barruntan in the future which may be more or less blustery for Basque public health, they are not the solution. As professionals, we believe we can offer innovative solutions to many of the problems that threaten the level of quality they deserve Basque patients. Solutions ranging from the base to transcend, proving their efficacy to other areas and levels.
Measures of spending cuts, which rather than improvements in the effectiveness and efficiency of the health care system itself, can give to the fret with the quality of care provided. The main consequence of this is none other than a negative impact on the health of the Basque citizenship.
As representatives of the health professionals of Bizkaia, through professional associations in which we develop its functions which under US law, we want to make an appeal to make heard our voice when planning changes or improvements in the health-Osakidetza Basque service. We can provide solutions and have desire to implement them.
Also, given that we owe to the health of our citizens, we will try by all means to not only maintain the current quality of our public health system, but to improve it as much as possible and deal decisively against anything that might pose a threat to the health of our citizens; in other words, in our own health.
