On January 26th, the Nova SBE Health Economics & Management Knowledge Center (NHEM) and the Economics For Policy Knowledge Center (EPF-KC), in partnership with the Central Administration of the Portuguese Health System (ACSS), held the first workshop for the Advisory Group set up to monitor the new Health Cost Accounting System for the National Health Service at the Nova School of Business and Economics (Nova SBE) Campus in Carcavelos. This project, led by the ACSS and starting in June 2023, is being developed under the funding of the European Commission's Technical Assistance Instrument (TSI) (DG REFORM), through the international consortium AARC- Consortium, and has the scientific coordination of Nova SBE led by Pedro Pita Barros (NHEM) and Pedro Brinca (EFP-KC). The technical team is made up by Marta Almeida, Carolina Santos and Mariana Videira and the project team by Marta Nogueira, Nádia Ahmad and Daniel Silva, with the support of its partners Technopolis. partners Technopolis Group Portugal and SEO Amsterdam Economics.
Six months after the start of the project, the aim of this session was to present the activities carried out to date, namely the tasks completed, the status of the project, the challenges and difficulties faced, as well as the results and main conclusions of the experience, both in terms of lessons learned and recommendations made by the Advisory Group and the newly appointed Ambassadors.
At the session to welcome the workshop, Tiago Gonçalves, member of the ACSS board of directors, stressed the importance of the project, considering it to be "structuring for the SNS and for the country". The ACSS "is committed to making it a reality", he assured. Ana Ferreira Reis, representing the European Commission (DG Reform), highlighted the importance of the IST in providing technical support for the implementation of reforms, and mentioned examples of good practice in health system reforms that are being developed in different EU Member States.
The new Health Cost Accounting System aims to improve the financial management of the SNS, in order to obtain useful information to support decision-making, in terms of efficiency evaluation, benchmark analysis, review of contractualization/financing and pricing models, as well as financial planning and multi-annual budgeting.
At the end of the session, Pedro Pita Barros, the project's scientific coordinator, summarized the conclusions with a set of recommendations and challenges for the proper implementation of the results.
