Primary healthcare management models in Catalonia: may the best win?

Abstract

Background: In Catalonia, the variety of the provision of Primary Healthcare has sparked intense debates over the last 20 years regarding the efficiency of the various management models. Our study analyzed the differences in the three existing management models of primary healthcare in Catalonia (the Catalan Health Institute, public consortiums and associative base entities).

Methods: The primary data were obtained from the reports of the Results Center of The Observatory of the Health System of Catalonia. Representative indicators were selected and compared with the Kruskall-Wallis test. They were later adjusted for confounding factors.

Results: There were differences in the average number of visits per population attended, the percentage of the population attended in the subgroup of population over 75 years of age, the percentage of patients over 74 years with more than twelve appointments, the rate of potentially avoidable hospitalizations (total and in the subgroup of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)), polypharmacy, the use of lipid-lowering drugs and the detection of prostate-specific antigen (PSA). When adjusting for confounding variables, the differences disappeared in all of them except for the indicator on the detection of PSA.

Conclusions: The differences favoured mainly the associative base entities disappear when they are corrected for confounding variables. The legal status of each provider does not significantly influence the health outcomes.