The Gulbenkian Platform for a Sustainable Health System initiative “Health in Portugal: A Challenge for the Future” was created in early 2013 with the aim of building a new vision for health in Portugal which integrates its NHS’s founding values of social solidarity, ensures sustainability of care and enhances citizen and patient participation.
After extensive work, the initiative launched its report “The Future for Health – Everyone has a role to play” on 23 September in Lisbon. The report was produced by an inclusive commission of international and national experts, including Lord Nigel Crisp, former Chief Executive of the British National Health Service (NHS) and Permanent Secretary of the UK Department of Health, and GHP Director Ilona Kickbusch, among others.
The report details a clear vision for the future of health in Portugal where the focus shifts to the role citizens can play and a system that makes them partners in health promotion and care. Portugal should engage citizens both as patients who can be the managers of their own health and as informal carers for family members. Increased health literacy is a crucial tool in achieving this and similarly contributes to the promotion of healthy living in societies that have become all too sedentary.
At the national level, care quality can be improved through early treatment, evidence-based services, the development of specialist networks and community services, and new service models that are person-centred and team-based. Reducing the incidence and management of chronic diseases is of vital importance both in terms of increasing quality of care and for the system’s financial sustainability. This sustainability equally depends on improving financial management, reforming the infrastructure of the health system, and developing contracting and commissioning mechanisms.
The next generation’s system will also require the dual ability of health care professionals to combine clinical knowledge and skill with leadership abilities in order to act as “agents of change” from within the system. The report recommends reforms in professional education in Portugal, as well as raising the status of nurses as key steps in achieving such a prospect.
Lastly, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, which initiated the review, committed itself to working towards three Gulbenkian Challenges that embody this approach: reducing hospital acquired infections, slowing growth in diabetes, and helping the country become a leader in childhood health and development. Available in both a summary form and a comprehensive report, the review achieves its task to “create a new vision for health and health care in Portugal, describe what this would mean in practice and set out how it might be achieved and sustained”. Using the Initiative’s vision as a roadmap, Portugal and others can look forward to the next generation of health where everyone has a role toplay.