Is primary health care worth it in the long run? Evidence from Brazil.

This paper assesses whether Brazilian primary health care is worth it in the long-run by estimating the accumulated costs and benefits of its flagship, the Family Health Strategy program (ESF). We employ an alternative strategy centered on years of exposure to the program to incorporate its dynamics. We also account for the program's heterogeneity with respect to the remuneration of ESF health teams and the intensity of coverage across Brazilian municipalities, measure by the number of people assisted by each ESF team, on average. To address heterogeneity in professional earnings, this paper employs, for the first time, a dataset containing the remuneration of professionals allocated to all ESF teams nationwide. The benefits are measured by the avoided deaths and hospitalizations due to causes sensitive to primary care. Results suggest that the net monetary benefit of the program is positive on average, with an optimum time of exposure of approximately 16 years. Significant heterogeneities in cost-benefit results were found since costs outweigh benefits in localities where the coverage is low intensive. On the other hand, the benefits outweigh the costs by 22.5% on average in municipalities with high intensive coverage.

Equity and economic evaluation of system-level health interventions: A case study of Brazil's Family Health Program.

Distributional economic evaluation estimates the value for money of health interventions in terms of population health and health equity impacts. When applied to interventions delivered at the population and health system-level interventions (PSIs) instead of clinical interventions, additional practical and methodological challenges arise. Using the example of the Programme Saúde da Familia (PSF) in Brazil, a community-level primary care system intervention, we seek to illustrate these challenges and provide potential solutions. We use a distributional cost-effectiveness analysis (DCEA) approach to evaluate the impact of the PSF on population health and between-state health inequalities in Brazil. Data on baseline health status, disease prevalence and PSF effectiveness are extracted from the literature and incorporated into a Markov model to estimate the long-term impacts in terms of disability-adjusted life years. The inequality and average health impacts are analysed simultaneously using health-related social welfare functions. Uncertainty is computed using Monte Carlo simulation. The DCEA encountered several challenges in the context of PSIs. Non-randomized, quasi-experimental methods may not be powered to identify treatment effect heterogeneity estimates to inform a decision model. PSIs are more likely to be funded from multiple public sector budgets, complicating the calculation of health opportunity costs. We estimate a cost-per-disability-adjusted life years of funding the PSF of $2640. Net benefits were positive across the likely range of intervention cost. Social welfare analysis indicates that, compared to gains in average health, changes in health inequalities accounted for a small proportion of the total welfare improvement, even at high levels of social inequality aversion. Evidence on the population health and health equity impacts of PSIs can be incorporated into economic evaluation methods, although with additional complexity and assumptions. The case study results indicate that the PSF is likely to be cost-effective but that the inequality impacts are small and highly uncertain.