National health care system

: characterization of the Portuguese Health Care System : main challenges and focus delivery : a strategic approach

Abstract

Health usually appears as one of the main concerns of the Portuguese, that is why it is so discussed; and also because of the amount of money spent each year on HealthCare. Regarding the public sector we are in a presence of an enormous challenge to the management team, at all levels, by the complexity of the system and also because of the changing minds of the population. Nowadays, the population not only demand outstanding HealthCare services but also demands outstanding management performances. The purpose of this work is to analyze the Portuguese HealthCare System, focusing the analysis in the main challenges the System has ahead and in the solutions that a Strategic Approach may bring to improve the Service Delivery. This work tries to build a bridge between HealthCare concepts and Management concepts, as such tries to contribute with valuable knowledge to the ongoing debate about our HealthCare Delivery. In order to reach those objectives we based our research not only in reports that our public entities release, each year, but also in a market research done with the help of HealthCare future and current professionals. The Portuguese HealthCare System is now under tremendous challenges; the financial pressure and the lack of a strategic planning are two among others; the need of structural changes is patent. A focus approach is the route and we discovered that only with a proper definition of value that takes into consideration the quality of the service per euro spent will shift performance.

Date of Award	3 Jul 2014
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Pedro Celeste (Supervisor)