Access and effectiveness inpatient care indicators and economic crisis: analysis based on the Brazilian Unified Health System data, Brazil and Southern Brazil states, 2009-2018

COVID-19 inpatient mortality in Brazil from 2020 to 2022: a cross-sectional overview study based on secondary data

BACKGROUND

In Brazil, the COVID-19 pandemic found the universal and public Unified Health System (SUS) with problems accumulated over time, due, among other reasons, to low investments, and disparities in resource distribution. The preparedness and response of the healthcare system, involving the SUS and a private sector, was affected by large socioeconomic and healthcare access inequities. This work was aimed at offering an overview of COVID-19 inpatient mortality during the pandemic in Brazil, exploring factors associated with its variations and, specifically, differences across public, private (for-profit) and philanthropic (private non-profit) inpatient healthcare units, providers, and non-providers of services to the SUS.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study used public secondary data. The main data source was the SIVEP-Gripe, which comprises data on severe acute respiratory illness records prospectively collected. We also employed the National Record of Health Establishments, the SUS' Hospitalization Information System and municipalities' data from IBGE. We considered adult COVID-19 hospitalizations registered in SIVEP-Gripe from February 2020 to December 2022 in inpatient healthcare units with a minimum of 100 cases in the period. Data analyses explored the occurrence of inpatient mortality, employing general linear mixed models to identify the effects of patients', health care processes', healthcare units' and municipalities' characteristics on it.

RESULTS

About 70% of the COVID-19 hospitalizations in Brazil were covered by the SUS, which attended the more vulnerable population groups and had worse inpatient mortality. In general, non-SUS private and philanthropic hospitals, mostly reimbursed by healthcare insurance plans accessible for more privileged socioeconomic classes, presented the best outcomes. Southern Brazil had the best performance among the macro-regions. Black and indigenous individuals, residents of lower HDI municipalities, and those hospitalized out of their residence city presented higher odds of inpatient mortality. Moreover, adjusted inpatient mortality rates were higher in the pandemic peak moments and were significantly reduced after COVID-19 vaccination reaching a reasonable coverage, from July 2021.

CONCLUSIONS

COVID-19 exposed socioeconomic and healthcare inequalities and the importance and weaknesses of SUS in Brazil. This work indicates the need to revert the disinvestment in the universal public system, a fundamental policy for reduction of inequities in the country.

Hospitals during economic crisis: a systematic review based on resilience system capacities framework

Background

Hospitals are the biggest users of the health system budgets. Policymakers are interested in improving hospital efficiency while maintaining their performance during the economic crisis. This study aims at analysing the hospitals’ policy solutions during the economic crisis using the resilience system capacities framework.

Method

This study is a systematic review. The search strategy was implemented on the Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, Scopus databases, and Econbiz search portal. Data were extracted and analysed through the comparative table of resilience system capacities framework and the World Health Organization (WHO) health system’s six building blocks (i.e., leadership and governance, service delivery, health workforce, health systems financing, health information systems, and medicines and equipment).

Findings

After the screening, 78 studies across 36 countries were reviewed. The economic crisis and adopted policies had a destructive effect on hospital contribution in achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC). The short-term absorptive capacity policies were the most frequent policies against the economic crisis. Moreover, the least frequent and most effective policies were adaptive policies. Transformative policies mainly focused on moving from hospital-based to integrated and community-based services. The strength of primary care and community-based services, types and combination of hospital financing systems, hospital performance before the crisis, hospital managers’ competencies, and regional, specialties, and ownership differences between hospitals can affect the nature and success of adopted policies.

Conclusion

The focus of countries on short-term policies and undermining necessary contextual factors, prioritizing efficiency over quality, and ignoring the interrelation of policies compromised hospital contribution in UHC.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-022-08316-4.

Crise econômica e disparidades no gasto, oferta e utilização de serviços públicos e privados de saúde no Brasil no período entre 2011 e 2019

Buscou-se analisar as repercussões da crise econômica sobre os setores público e privado do sistema de saúde brasileiro e realizar uma análise de tendência de indicadores econômicos e assistenciais, elaborados a partir de dados secundários de fontes públicas oficiais, relacionados ao gasto, ao desempenho econômico de planos e seguros de saúde, à oferta e utilização de serviços. Os resultados demonstraram estagnação do gasto público em saúde, redução do gasto público per capita e do acesso aos serviços públicos de saúde. Contrariamente, em um contexto de queda da renda e do emprego, os planos de saúde mantiveram clientes, ampliaram as receitas, os lucros e a produção assistencial. O desempenho positivo das empresas, antes e a partir da crise, pode ser explicado pela tendência de manutenção de subsídios públicos para o setor privado e pelas estratégias empresariais financeirizadas. Conclui-se que a atuação do Estado brasileiro durante a crise aprofundou a restrição de recursos ao setor público e favoreceu a expansão dos serviços privados, o que contribuiu para aumentar a discrepância no acesso a serviços públicos e privados de saúde no país.

Patient safety incidents and adverse events reported by Brazilian citizens: a descriptive study, 2014-2018

OBJECTIVE

To describe incidents related to healthcare services reported by Brazilian citizens on the Health Surveillance Notification System.

METHODS

This was a descriptive study, using the database from the Health Surveillance Notification System (Notivisa) of the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa), 'citizen' module, between 2014 and 2018.

RESULTS

935 incidents were reported, most of them occurred among females (60.9%), the elderly (20.1%) and those of white race/skin color (51.0%). The majority of the reported incidents were related to the use of medications (50.8%), falls (7.5%) and healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) (7.2%), which occurred during provision of healthcare, treatment or surgery (37.3%), in daytime (58.3%) and in hospital setting (37.4%).

CONCLUSION

It could be seen a low adherence to the notification system among the citizens. There was a higher frequency of incidents related to medications, falls and HAIs. This shows that citizens have the capability to recognize and report these incidents as patient safety issues.

Desempenho dos serviços de saúde do SUS de uma macrorregião do estado de Pernambuco, Brasil

RESUMO O objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar o desempenho dos serviços de saúde de uma macrorregião do estado de Pernambuco. A pesquisa foi realizada utilizando dados do Projeto de Avaliação do Desempenho do Sistema de Saúde nas dimensões efetividade, acesso, adequação e aceitabilidade. O período de análise foi de 2008 a 2017. O julgamento foi realizado a partir da tendência esperada dos indicadores. Classificou-se o desempenho em: excelente (=75%), satisfatório (50%-74,9%), insatisfatório (49%-25%) e crítico (<25%). O desempenho foi insatisfatório nas dimensões efetividade (41,7%) e acesso (46%), e excelente nas dimensões adequação (76,2%) e aceitabilidade (100%). Entre os indicadores que contribuíram para o baixo desempenho nas primeiras dimensões, destacam-se: internações por pneumonia, incidência da síndrome da imunodeficiência adquirida, sífilis congênita, vacinação em crianças menores de um ano com tetravalente/pentavalente e procedimentos de alta complexidade. A classificação final revelou resultado satisfatório (52,4%) na Macrorregião de Saúde. Diante dos resultados, torna-se necessária a observação individual dos indicadores, visando ao planejamento de ações que promovam uma melhora nesse panorama. Esta pesquisa contribuiu para uma ampliação da avaliação de desempenho, divulgando a potencialidade do Projeto de Avaliação do Desempenho do Sistema de Saúde para o monitoramento e a análise do sistema de saúde.

How atmospheric pollutants impact the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer: A var-based model

The impact of air pollution on humans is a worrisome factor that has gained prominence over the years due to the importance of the topic to society. Lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are among the diseases associated with pollution that increase the mortality rate in Brazil and worldwide. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the impacts of air pollutants on mortality rates from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer (LC) using vector autoregressive (VAR) modeling. The adjusted model was a VAR(1) and, according to the Granger causality test, the air pollutants selected were PM₁₀, O₃, CO, NO₂, and SO₂. The shocks applied to the variables O₃, using the impulse response function, negatively impacted COPD; in the eighth period, which is stabilized. The LC variable suffered more significant variations from O₃ and after a shock in this variable, an initially negative response in LC occurred and the series stabilized in period nine. After one year, 20.19% of COPD variance was explained by O₃. After twelve months, the atmospheric pollutant O₃ represented 5.00% and NO₂ represented 4.02% of LC variance. Moreover, the variables that caused the highest impact on COPD and LC mortality rates were O₃ and NO₂, indicating that air pollution influences the clinical state of people who have these diseases and even contributes to their development. The VAR model was able to identify the air pollutants that have the most significant impact on the diseases analyzed and explained the interrelationship between them.

Mortalidade domiciliar de idosos no município do Rio de Janeiro durante a pandemia de Coronavírus, 2020

Resumo Objetivo analisar os óbitos ocorridos no município do Rio de Janeiro (RJ, Brasil) segundo local de ocorrência, faixa etária, causa e características sociodemográficas no contexto da pandemia de Covid-19. Método calculou-se a distribuição da mortalidade por local de ocorrência, faixa etária e causa. O “excesso de mortalidade” foi analisado pela comparação das médias mensais dos óbitos por local de ocorrência, causas e características sociodemográficas nos meses de abril a junho dos anos 2017, 2018 e 2019, com aqueles ocorridos nos mesmos meses de 2020. Resultados os óbitos domiciliares aumentaram quando comparada com a média no triênio anterior. As principais causas de mortalidade não foram alteradas, mas tiveram aumentos relevantes. Destaca-se o crescimento da insuficiência respiratória não classificada e dos óbitos por causa mal definida. Quanto às características sociodemográficas, verificou-se aumento maior entre homens, raça/cor negra, viúvos e baixa escolaridade. Conclusão o aumento da mortalidade domiciliar encontrado no município do Rio de Janeiro pode estar associado a efeitos da pandemia de Covid-19. Além disso, o aumento de mortes com causa básica mal definida pode estar associado à pandemia de Covid-19 em razão da falta de testes e dificuldade de acesso a serviços de saúde. A maior vulnerabilidade dos idosos é conhecida, porém estudos adicionais são importantes para entender os diferenciais de sexo e estado civil. A ligação entre raça/cor negra e menor nível de escolaridade e maior chance de mortalidade domiciliar ocorre em razão de uma sobreposição de riscos durante a vida, que leva pessoas nesses grupos à maior vulnerabilidade.