Public Health Expenditure in Brazil: an Analysis of Efficiency
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Public Health Expenditure in Brazil: an Analysis of Efficiency Autoria: Lucas Maia dos Santos, Marco Aurélio Marques Ferreira, Márcio Augusto Gonçalves, Evandro Rodrigues de Faria Abstract An univocal understanding of the relationship between public administration and performance is an important and elusive goal for researchers in public administration. After decentralization of both actions and services of healthcare system, the financial resources passed to be transferred to the municipal health funds, as being the administration of the resources under the responsibility of the municipal manager. Taking into account the limited existence of resources it is opportune to question the way the application of the resources in health has been managed. So, this study was carried out to investigate the performance of public expenditures in the public healthcare, as taking 160 administrative microregions on southeastern Brazil as reference. With limitation of the internal availability of governmental resources, mainly aggravated by the Brazilian government's impossibility to republish the provisory contribution on monetary transactions called Contribuição Provisória Sobre Movimentação Financeira (CPMF), in which most resources were consigned to healthcare, the current discussion leans over the optimization capacity of those limited sources against the need for enlargement of the attendance to population. Initially, the relevant variables were explored after the descriptive analysis with quantitative and qualitative efforts. The efficiency scores were generated, by applying the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and using the bootstrap procedure on the sample’s efficiency mean, in order to create the mean’s confidence intervals. According to the results, higher efficiency was observed for the microregions with more than 500 thousand inhabitants as well as in the capitals to detriment of the interior. High amplitude of the efficiency scores from 0.26 to 1 were observed, that means disparity in resource application or no standardizations of output creation. It is distinguished that 16.8% microregions presented the highest scores, as most being in the State of São Paulo. The efficiency means is between 0.68 and 0.75, at 95% confidence. Thus, the results showed that the performance of the Southern microregions can be considered as intermediary and 18,8% of microregions have a weak performance. Finally, it assures the importance of the promotion of policies for improvement of the health efficiency as a function of the interregional particularities. The mainly limitation of this study is that was impossible to measure the quality of the services. Microregions that make more ambulatory procedures and taking care of more families don’t mean owning the better health system. But in a country where many people have no accesses to some healthcare services is important to consider the quantity despite of quality. 1 1. Introduction This study was carried out to investigate the performance of the public expenditure in healthcare, as taking the administrative microregions on southern Brazil as reference for analysis from the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) classification. The study is based on the factual presupposition of optimization of the resources in the public sector, because the idea that performance understood as the production of good results must be the main objective of all governor, as seeking the maximization of the social welfare. An univocal understanding of the relationship between public administration and performance is an important and elusive goal for researchers in public administration. The health, education, feeding and freedom constitute a fundamental right of the human being, since they situate as essential dimension of the quality of life (QOL). It is a result from the combination among the social, economical, political and cultural factors that are particularly presented in each society. Moreover, understand the performance of public expenditure is a way to manage accountability and proceed the idea of the the best value for money. Since the 19-ies, in Brazil there is a concern on the part of the health researchers and governmental heads in verifying the quality and effectiveness in the delivery of the health services in the public sector. See Serapioni (1999) and Castiel (2008). Thus, it becomes more and more necessary the use of techniques and methods that make possible an evaluation of the sector performance, as taking the regional public units responsible for execution of the health services as reference. After decentralization of the actions and services of health, the financial resources were transferred from the Ministério da Saúde (Brazilian Healthcare Ministry) to the municipal health funds, as being the administration of resources and the warranty of quality services for the population under the responsibility of the municipal governors. Due to the complexity of some health services and to the partition of the regional infrastructure through displacement of assistance, municipal consortia and concentration of attendance services on microregional plan, it becomes appropriate to use the registrations and accountancy of the information in this territorial unit, on such a way that several counties are represented by pole-cities. Thus, taking into account the limited existence of resources as well as the characteristics and specificities of each Brazilian microregion, it is opportune to question how application of the resources has been managed, as well as to investigate the products from those applications at interregional level, as a form to creating public intervention policies in favor of quantitative and qualitative improvements in the health. So, the analysis of the performance in public expenditures of the health sector will be accomplished by applying the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) that seeks to quantify and compare the efficiency in using the resources for the provision of goods and services. For complementation of this stage, the bootstrap procedures will be used to measure the effect of the errors on the efficiency estimators. This study takes as reference either the works by either O´Toole (1999) and Bretschneider et al. (2007) who measured the performance in education by applying DEA, and those by Marinho (2001; 2003), Faria et al. (2008) and Gonçalves et al. (2008) who discourse on the performance in the health area. The researches and scientific productions mentioned on health sector have been contributing for the comparative evaluation of efficiency in the area, as establishing internal reference units in studies addressed to hospitals, clinics and health ambulatory services. So, the present work will show the inter comparison as methodological progress, as being an unpublished application in the Brazilian scenery. 2 2. Theoretical Framework 2.1. Understanding the healthcare system in Brazil The debate about the reality of the healthcare in Brazil was supported on studies and researches that pointed out the fragility of the development model and also characterized the healthcare system adopted during the military dictatorship as centralizer, hierarchized and mainly inefficient and irrational. In the 1970s, the sanitary movement appeared from the population’s dissatisfaction to discuss how would should be the health management. In 1987, the federal government created the unified health decentralized system named Sistema Único Descentralizado de Saúde - SUDS, that implemented some proposals of the sanitary movement, as mainly looking for decentralization of the system. Then, the sanitary reform project named Projeto de Reforma Sanitária was taken to the National Constituent Assembly and approved in almost its totality in the Federal Constitution of 1988, that adopted the proposal of a unified health system called Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS. The Federal Constitution of 1988 considers the health, from art. 196 to art. 200, and the most important point is the conception of the health as right of all and the duty of the State, as well as its universal and equalitarian access, besides its inclusion into tripod of the social security together with the social welfare (BRAZIL, 1988). For several economical and political matters due to the privatizing character of the State, the SUS still was not implemented in its plenitude; however its guidelines are the pathway for the improvement of the health system in Brazil, as the recent researches point out. With the creation of regulating agencies in Brazil, there was a decrease in the role of the State as concerning to the supply of public services as well as a regulation process that stimulates both competition and innovation. Thus, “the control and evaluation of the processes that are interesting for all have been transferred “to no-state entities, as dislocating the focus of the government's collection to society" (RIZZOTTO, 2000:210). In Brazil, the problems involving the health sector are many and they stand out when analyzing the medical establishments, the sectored policies and the health model that has been adopted in the last decades. Then, there is a need for rationalization of the actions in this extent and always looking for optimization of the resource applications. Thus, this study will approach a multidimensional focus of the performance according to Forbes and Lynn (2007), to the detriment of other approaches only under the monetary viewpoint. Nowadays, it is possible to notice the effort of the counties towards the attendance