Portuguese supplies spending sustained despite cost-cutting drive
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
Portugal's national health service (SNS) succeeded in containing its spending in 2007 at less than 3.1% above the previous year's - an increase of E244m ($362m). So reports the directorate-general for budgeting (DGO), citing provisional estimates that take the total to around E7.9bn. These feature a 2.2% increase in non-capital purchasing, which it attributed to "better practices in hospital provisioning and a reduction in the cost of medicines". In terms of financial management, despite an 8% rise in service delivery costs and a 23.3% increase in "investment subsidy", the DGO believes that 2007 ended with a budgetary surplus of around E110m.