Panama Region
Medium HALE and Life Expectancy
Low Gap between HALE and Life Expectancy
Final Longevity Progressiveness Ranking: #28
Final Longevity Progressiveness Score: 0.645
Practical Recommendation Summary: Health infrastructure should be developed more evenly, including availability of health workers, medicine and technological equipment, both urban centres and rural areas where populations face with limited access to health services now. The lack of of professionals is also an issue limited to the health sector. The government needs commitments to increasing human resources for the healthcare sector, that will necessarily lead to expanding the capacity of the country’s medical faculties.
Practical Recommendations (Full):
● Provide incentives for development of patient-centered treatments. Strengthen prevention and health promotion across all areas of life including day-care centres, schools and nursing homes, strengthen workplace health promotion and better integrate it with occupational safety and health.
● Improve engagement of high-qualified staff in healthcare. Shortage of staff is the additional burden on the healthcare system as it is the reason for the unmet needs and worse patient outcomes that lead to premature deaths. The government should provide financial incentives for medical staff in public sector and funding to state healthcare services.
● Bridge the gap between health professionals and data scientist by utilising AI for Healthy Longevity. AI offers a range of effective and innovative solutions to medical problems, revolutionizing medical domain. Machine learning makes diagnosing more efficient. It processes information with less time and provide generated data with the right context.
● Reduce socioeconomic inequalities in health at individual and population level. Behavioural risk factors tend to be more common among people at a disadvantage because of a lesser education or lower income.
● Focus on care delivery and particular people needs. Resourcing is unequal across sub-systems, out-of-pocket payments remain high. Ineffective allocation of healthcare resources underlines the urgency of reforms. The government should provide incentives to invest in prevention services, treatment of mental diseases, making healthcare good for patients and for taxpayers.
● International collaboration on ageing. Strategic partnership between countries would provide access to world’s most successful practices for the maintenance the optimal state of health and technologies, products, services and social policies.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths:
● Panama’s healthcare system consists predominantly of large public sector with small but expanding private sector.
● The entire population is entitled to the healthcare system through the employee contributions to the social fund aimed to finance their medical needs and their family’s.
● Significant increase in healthcare coverage and affordability of healthcare treatment as a result of reduced level of unemployment.
● The life expectancy in Panama has significantly improved for the past decade.
Weaknesses:
● Services is Panama provided by public sector, especially, by MISA are relatively expensive.
● Access to health services remains inequal, a fact readily visible in the marked discrepancy between health outcomes in urban and rural areas.
● In 2014 there was a nine-year gap between the region with the highest life expectancy (Panama at 79 years) and the lowest (the indigenous reservation Comarca Ngobé Buglé at 70 years).
● The infant mortality is relatively high and was 13.4 in 2017 that is several times higher than in OECD countries.
Opportunities:
● The public sector is currently undergoing unprecedented expansion, as the government seeks to increase and renovate existing health infrastructure.
● The country embarked on an ambitious infrastructure expansion plan, which included the construction of five regional hospitals, a medical city in the capital, and a network of smaller health care facilities and ambulatory services.
● The 2015 budget allocates nearly $2bn to MINSA (an increase from $1.84bn in 2014), of which $590.5m is earmarked for investment.
Threats:
● Population growth and rising family incomes are two factors driving up demand for health services, and putting additional pressure on the care system, which is characterised by crowded facilities and long waiting periods for surgery.
● Ischemic heart diseases, stroke and Alzheimer’s diseases are the main causes of deaths for elders in Panama and there is a bad tendency in the increasing of their bad impact on the health status of the population.
● Headache disorders, low back pain and blindness along with diabetes are the main reasons for the disability-adjusted years in Panama.
SWOT Conclusions
Strengths Analysis:
● There were significant decreases in the infant mortality rates starting from 1990s.
● There is a significant amount of doctors in Panama. The country’s average was 15.9 doctors per 10,000 inhabitants in 2012, according to MINSA.
● More than a decade of stable economic growth has resulted in demand for private health services increase significantly.
● MiniMed is Panama’s first medical franchise specialising in primary care that has a good expansion.
● There was a significant decrease in the bad impact of the malnutrition for the health status and mortality rates.
● Smoking and alcohol consumption rates are relatively low in Panama.
Weaknesses Analysis:
● Health infrastructure, including availability of health workers, medicine and technological equipment, is concentrated in urban centres, leaving indigenous and rural populations with limited access to health services.
● There is a lack of transparency for the governmental regulation of the projects in the healthcare system.
● The care offered by the public sector is less progressive and outcome-oriented.
● Private expenditure represented 31.4% of total health spending in 2012, with the majority of that total (79%) being out-of-pocket expenditure (down from 85.1% in 2010) and is share is relatively high.
● There is a significant lack of professionals in the healthcare system of Panama that represents a skill shortage in the country and generates a challenge for the operation’s dimension of hospitals. The country faces a shortage of some 190 general practitioners, 700 nurses and another 700 medical technicians.
● Panama’s government is facing the challenge of increasing capacity for the public sector in the healthcare system.
Low Gap between HALE and Life Expectancy
Final Longevity Progressiveness Ranking: #28
Final Longevity Progressiveness Score: 0.645
Practical Recommendation Summary: Health infrastructure should be developed more evenly, including availability of health workers, medicine and technological equipment, both urban centres and rural areas where populations face with limited access to health services now. The lack of of professionals is also an issue limited to the health sector. The government needs commitments to increasing human resources for the healthcare sector, that will necessarily lead to expanding the capacity of the country’s medical faculties.
Practical Recommendations (Full):
● Provide incentives for development of patient-centered treatments. Strengthen prevention and health promotion across all areas of life including day-care centres, schools and nursing homes, strengthen workplace health promotion and better integrate it with occupational safety and health.
● Improve engagement of high-qualified staff in healthcare. Shortage of staff is the additional burden on the healthcare system as it is the reason for the unmet needs and worse patient outcomes that lead to premature deaths. The government should provide financial incentives for medical staff in public sector and funding to state healthcare services.
● Bridge the gap between health professionals and data scientist by utilising AI for Healthy Longevity. AI offers a range of effective and innovative solutions to medical problems, revolutionizing medical domain. Machine learning makes diagnosing more efficient. It processes information with less time and provide generated data with the right context.
● Reduce socioeconomic inequalities in health at individual and population level. Behavioural risk factors tend to be more common among people at a disadvantage because of a lesser education or lower income.
● Focus on care delivery and particular people needs. Resourcing is unequal across sub-systems, out-of-pocket payments remain high. Ineffective allocation of healthcare resources underlines the urgency of reforms. The government should provide incentives to invest in prevention services, treatment of mental diseases, making healthcare good for patients and for taxpayers.
● International collaboration on ageing. Strategic partnership between countries would provide access to world’s most successful practices for the maintenance the optimal state of health and technologies, products, services and social policies.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths:
● Panama’s healthcare system consists predominantly of large public sector with small but expanding private sector.
● The entire population is entitled to the healthcare system through the employee contributions to the social fund aimed to finance their medical needs and their family’s.
● Significant increase in healthcare coverage and affordability of healthcare treatment as a result of reduced level of unemployment.
● The life expectancy in Panama has significantly improved for the past decade.
Weaknesses:
● Services is Panama provided by public sector, especially, by MISA are relatively expensive.
● Access to health services remains inequal, a fact readily visible in the marked discrepancy between health outcomes in urban and rural areas.
● In 2014 there was a nine-year gap between the region with the highest life expectancy (Panama at 79 years) and the lowest (the indigenous reservation Comarca Ngobé Buglé at 70 years).
● The infant mortality is relatively high and was 13.4 in 2017 that is several times higher than in OECD countries.
Opportunities:
● The public sector is currently undergoing unprecedented expansion, as the government seeks to increase and renovate existing health infrastructure.
● The country embarked on an ambitious infrastructure expansion plan, which included the construction of five regional hospitals, a medical city in the capital, and a network of smaller health care facilities and ambulatory services.
● The 2015 budget allocates nearly $2bn to MINSA (an increase from $1.84bn in 2014), of which $590.5m is earmarked for investment.
Threats:
● Population growth and rising family incomes are two factors driving up demand for health services, and putting additional pressure on the care system, which is characterised by crowded facilities and long waiting periods for surgery.
● Ischemic heart diseases, stroke and Alzheimer’s diseases are the main causes of deaths for elders in Panama and there is a bad tendency in the increasing of their bad impact on the health status of the population.
● Headache disorders, low back pain and blindness along with diabetes are the main reasons for the disability-adjusted years in Panama.
SWOT Conclusions
Strengths Analysis:
● There were significant decreases in the infant mortality rates starting from 1990s.
● There is a significant amount of doctors in Panama. The country’s average was 15.9 doctors per 10,000 inhabitants in 2012, according to MINSA.
● More than a decade of stable economic growth has resulted in demand for private health services increase significantly.
● MiniMed is Panama’s first medical franchise specialising in primary care that has a good expansion.
● There was a significant decrease in the bad impact of the malnutrition for the health status and mortality rates.
● Smoking and alcohol consumption rates are relatively low in Panama.
Weaknesses Analysis:
● Health infrastructure, including availability of health workers, medicine and technological equipment, is concentrated in urban centres, leaving indigenous and rural populations with limited access to health services.
● There is a lack of transparency for the governmental regulation of the projects in the healthcare system.
● The care offered by the public sector is less progressive and outcome-oriented.
● Private expenditure represented 31.4% of total health spending in 2012, with the majority of that total (79%) being out-of-pocket expenditure (down from 85.1% in 2010) and is share is relatively high.
● There is a significant lack of professionals in the healthcare system of Panama that represents a skill shortage in the country and generates a challenge for the operation’s dimension of hospitals. The country faces a shortage of some 190 general practitioners, 700 nurses and another 700 medical technicians.
● Panama’s government is facing the challenge of increasing capacity for the public sector in the healthcare system.