Impacto Econômico da Medicina de Família nos Sistemas de Saúde na América Latina

There are few researches that address the economic and sanitary importance of the organizational model of a level of care or of the presence of certain professionals. The aim of this descriptive and transversal study is to explore and analyze the possible associations between the specialty of family medicine and economic and sanitary indicators in 16 countries of Ibero-America. The data processing was carried out through the program R, a programming language that shows “a set of functions that maintain some type of relation between them”. It seems that there is a positive association between the number of specialists in family medicine with GDP, investment in health and life expectancy and in negative with the GINI index, anemia, mortality in children under 5 years, maternal mortality ratio and in traffic accidents. The GDP per capita is negatively related to anemia, mortality in children under 5 years of age, maternal and accident mortality ratio, and less intensely with cardiovascular mortality and suicide. There are no correlations between pocket expenses or investment in healthcare. Despite the different health and social realities of the countries studied, a favorable relation is found between the availability of specialists in Family Medicine and better health results, which suggests that it can be an efficient strategy for health services. More studies are necessary to analyze the statistical scope of this association.