The Minister of Health, Carolina Corcho, yesterday led the first Public Hearing for the Transformation of Health. This intervention was made to comply with the requirement of this appointment that the Congress of the Republic had made. From there, the minister assured that the Colombian health system must be transformed, so that public clinics and hospitals are strengthened and do not end up going bankrupt, due to paying a debt to intermediaries, as she maintained from Cali during the hearing.
The head of the Health portfolio pointed out thathe strengthening of public hospitals must be one of the thematic axes for the transformation of healththerefore, assured that the current system is not favorable for public care centers, he said this referring to the Hospital Universitario del Valle (HUV).
Minister Carolina Corcho specified that this hospital “survives because of its strength, also because of its social and scientific importance, but not precisely because the model favors public hospitals and the State Social Enterprises (ESE) are privileged; this has to be the subject of a reform”.
For the minister, the resources that are assigned to the Health Promotion Entities (EPS) through the budget assigned to this portfolio, end up in the hands of their administrators and not for the benefit of people who need medical care or of the personnel that works for the sector, reason why this system is one that deserves to be modified.
“We have to overcome that model because the State can deliver public resources to the managing intermediary so that he pays himselfthis bankrupts the hospitals and clinics that are not even part of its vertical integration”, added the Minister of Health.
In this regard, the head of the Health portfolio added that, does not disagree that private services continue to be offered, but what it intends is to strengthen public health care centers. The maximum purpose of this strengthening would be that, beyond being places where medical care is provided, they can also be centers where research that contributes to science is developed.
“The hospital is the sovereignty of the State in the territory and its most important scientific commitment in health matters, it must be the center of science thought,” said the Minister of Health.
On the other hand, he added that, currently, there are very few entities that present optimal conditions in the service they offer to their users, so 14 are in liquidation process. It should be noted that, in total, there are 32 EPSs that were in operation when the government of President Gustavo Petro entered.
“Only four of them (EPS) today meet good indicators financial and service provision”, said Minister Carolina Corcho.
According to the statements of the government official, the modifications that the health system would have also have to do with the labor and salary situation in which the workers in the sector find themselves. Well, he pointed out that within the process of labor formalization, it is required that there be a decent and decent payment to all staff, since job stability offers guarantees for medical centers to continue performing successfully, as well as being an incentive important for the health sector to have a research vocation.
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