Best available treatment prescriptions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are limited in Catalonia. Triple treatment in a single device, By the restrictions imposed by Catalan doctors when prescribing this drug. If the doctor exceeds this limit, There are financial penalties on their wages.
That’s how they condemned it Target The Association of People with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (Apepoc) said the Catalan Ministry of Health, headed by Manel Balcells, “has turned its back on patients” with this common condition, which Can reduce airflow and cause breathing problems for “completely economical” reasons. After statewide revocation of triple therapy COPD visas, Catalonia is the only region to limit the prescription of this treatment and limit its doctors.
According to him Drug prescription quality indicators (quick frozenThis newspaper has visited the Catalan Health Service), which quantitatively and qualitatively measures the pharmacological prescription of certain treatments, Catalan doctors They can only prescribe 20% of new triple therapies. According to Apepoc, if this percentage is exceeded, “physicians and hospitals are subject to financial penalties.”
«Hospital center ‘punished’ Up to 2% of hospital budget», medical sources confirmed to this publication, noting that for large hospitals this means a reduction in annual budgets of about 1 million. In the case of primary care, ‘the doctor himself is punished’ The so-called “efficacy supplement”. That is, they “lose” part of their complement if the limits specified in the IQF are exceeded.
This occurs in communities that pay the lowest fees to family doctors, a gross annual amount of €46,244, while 61,343 euros from Murcia, According to the union. Additionally, Catalonia has one of the worst COPD rates among its citizens, The prevalence rate is 17.3%, 11.8% higher than the Spanish average.As for UnderdiagnosisThe data is even more astonishing: 80.6%, compared with the Spanish average of 74.6%. “We will continue to work hard to improve these data and we hope Balcells will not continue to turn a blind eye to a disease that kills one person every 20 minutes in Spain and affects hundreds of thousands in Catalonia,” an Apepoc spokesperson said. Nicole Haas.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) It affects approximately 2.9 million people in Spain, 300,000 of them suffer from severe stages of the disease One person dies every 20 minutes.Furthermore, it is The third leading cause of death in the worldanyone The fourth is in Spain.
“Fake” visa
June 21, Ministry of Health announces final cancellation of visas putting pressure on inhaled triple therapy. Due to the pandemic, this bureaucratic hurdle has been temporarily suspended since March 18, 2021, as people affected by the disease are at risk of severe coronavirus if they are infected. However, with the World Health Organization declaring the international health emergency officially over on May 5, patient associations feared restrictions would be reimposed, but this ultimately did not happen.
In Catalonia, however, patients and doctors’ associations report that there are still “Fake” visa Since triple therapy is included in Drug prescription quality indicators (quick frozen) limits its prescription. To this end, on June 15, the Catalan Parliament unanimously passed a motion urging the autonomous region’s Ministry of Health to lift restrictions on IQF.
Therefore, on Thursday 15 September, the Minister of Health, Manel Balcells, appeared in Parliament in response to the motion. During the above appearance, Balcells ignored the part of the motion dealing with COPD, despite Deputy Jordi Fabrega (ERC) twice urging him to speak out on the matter. Finally, the minister added that he would give a written reply. «At Apepoc, we contacted Balcells’ cabinet several times in order to provide them with all the information on this issue. In the end, the MP rejected COPD patients and the Catalan parliament that asked him to make a decision. This is disappointing, but even so, we are once again leaving it to parliamentarians to address this issue,” an APEPOC spokesperson said. Nicole Haasto this newspaper.