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Reform Support
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Supporting reforms to improve the quality and sustainability of our healthcare systems

Funding Programme
Year
  • 2021

Adapting Primary Care to the current needs of the population in Spain

The European Commission is supporting the Spanish Ministry of Health (MoH) in developing Recommendations on criteria, governance models and requirements to promote equity in access to high-quality Primary Care (PC) services.

Context

Health systems are struggling to adapt to growing aging populations with chronicity, comorbidities, and dependency. In addition to these trends, in Spain there is also a structural problem with shortage of workers in PC and increasing inequalities due territorial dispersion in rural areas.

With this project, the Spanish MoH has the objective to adapt PC to the current and future needs of the population in Spain by developing recommendations in a comprehensive participatory process involving all Health regions, on the following areas of PC: 1) Planning; 2) Organization and Management; 3) Human Resources; 4) Financing and 5) Infrastructure and Equipment.

Support delivered

At the end of the project, the Ministry of Health had at their disposal: i) a report with an analysis of primary care regional models, ii) a report with lessons on best practices on primary care reforms across Europe, iii) recommendations on how to adapt normative and governance frameworks for primary care and primary care centres, iv) an action plan to implement the recommendations, v) tools/checklist to assess where regions stand with respected to the recommendations and to prioritize investments areas, vi) a communication strategy and linked material.

Results achieved

The Ministry of Health and the Health Regions adopted the Recommendations and the Operational Plan and will continue working together in their implementation. In turn, the project will help adapt Primary Care to the current needs of the population in Spain.

Useful links

Ministerio de Sanidad - Ministerio - Proyecto Adapting Primary Care to the current needs of the population in Spain

More about the project

You can read the final report here: