Impact of the Price of Dialysis Treatment and the Prevalence in Dialysis on the Health Budget in Portugal

Abstract

In Portugal, all expenses related to the replacement treatment of renal function in chronic kidney disease are supported through the budget of the Ministry of Health. The author, who limits the analysis to the modality of dialysis treatment, reviews the relative importance of the two factors that have the greatest influence on these expenses. The so-called comprehensive price (CP) which includes dialysis, medicines and diagnostic tests – and the number of patients undergoing treatment (prevalence). The CP with a very high initial value was progressively reduced, with these corrections contributing positively to a decrease in expenses. On the contrary, the prevalence of dialysis has always been increasing, mainly as a result of an extremely high incidence of new patients starting dialysis. The positive effect of decreasing CP it is not only completely nullified by the opposite effect resulting from the increase in prevalence, but it is even surpassed, with a significant increase in expenses. Everything seems to indicate that the high prevalence of dialysis represents the most important factor responsible for the high level of state expenditure in the treatment of chronic kidney disease in Portugal. In order to contain expenses, it will be necessary not only to correct the CP value again, but to analyze the cause, or causes, responsible for the very high levels of incidence/prevalence in dialysis that are observed in our country

Keywords

• budgets
• health expenditures
• portugal
• renal dialysis/economics